If you're following the discussion about blogging and journalism, you've probably noticed that one of the things people talk about is credibility. One of the ways mainstream news organizations try to enhance and preserve their credibility is by making it clear to readers and viewers who pays the bills. For my employers, the sale of advertising space in the paper and time on our network pays my salary and the operating costs of our news organization. I'm pretty sure most readers and viewers understand that and are able to factor in the way we make our money when they decide how credible we are.
In fact, journalists themselves 'follow the money' all the time when we try to report on the motives or character of an individual, business, or government group. We do that because we believe that when our readers and viewers know, for example, that a drug company is paying university researchers to assess the safety of their products, readers are better able to assess the independence and credibility of the resulting study when they know who paid the bills for that study.
That's why I think it important that bloggers who wish to challenge mainstream journalism or criticize should make some disclosures of their own in the interests of letting their readers assess the potential for bias or conflict.
So, in that spirit, starting today, I'm walking the walk and talking the talk. You'll notice a new section midway underneath the photos on the right-hand at the bottom on the left-hand side of this blog. It's titled: "Who pays for this blog?" and you should see it there or in another prominent spot on this blog all the time.
I know of no examples or templates for this sort of thing so I just wrote it up trying to explain in plain language how I come to have the resources to publish this blog. If you think there are other things I ought to disclose or if there's something in that disclaimer that's not clear, I'd love to hear about it.