Established media continue pay-per-post discussion

Danish free newspaper ‘Urban’ has an article (in Danish) today on companies paying bloggers to write about them in praising terms.

Among other things they point to the fact that recieving payment (be it monetary or otherwise) for posts could be conflicting with Danish marketing legislations, if the blogger does not clearly state that this is the case. This makes me wonder… How many reporters at established media don’t, from time to time accept products or otherwise in return for writing about them?

If you want positive publicity for your phone, mp3 player, concert, restaurant etc do you charge the reporter for it? Do reporters always clearly stat ‘I got in to this movie for free in order to write about it’?

I know, I know – there’s a difference between demanding POSITIVE exposure in turn for products and offering products hoping that reporters or bloggers will enjoy them and write about the, but really – if we start to look at bloggers with the law in our hand, shouldn’t we take a closer look at established media as well?

By the way – just to explain the headline – Trine-Maria discussed the issue at hovedetpaabloggen (also in Danish) quite a while back – as far as I remember, Urban wrote about it back then too.

They then decided to look inot the issue further as a new company has seen the light of day in Denmark – Semoblog are attempting to create a business around the concept, paying bloggers to write about their clients.

I’ll definitely be following developments at Semoblog, although at DKK 40 (app. 8 USD) a post, I probably wont be selling my credibility and integrity just yet… and I kinda wonder who will…

UPDATE: BTW, I still believe that the only sensitive way for companies to spend money on blogs is to allocate ressources towards their employees blogging themselves and participating in conversations at other blogs.