2009, sadly, has so far been the year that parenting bloggers were–often unfairly–vilified in the media. With talk of “blogola,” pay for play, shady review blogs, PR blackouts, and the grossly false assertion by the WSJ blog that the FTC is “considering new rules for parent bloggers,” you’d think that we were all a bunch of hustlers, whores, and naive housewives who left our professional skills, advanced degrees, and ethical backbones at the hospital with our placentas.
It’s just not true.
The vast, vast majority in this community (including plenty who’ve been mentioned in the press, by the way) have steel-strong ethics, unwavering integrity, and a continued commitment to the authenticity that is one of the original hallmarks of blogging.
So we’re taking our community back.
Over email and twitter over the past several months, I’ve been having the most spectacular conversations with Susan Getgood, Kristen Chase, and Julie Marsh. We all write very different kinds of personal blogs, and we all have a toe (or several) in marketing. But one of the things that we agree on is that we are, by and large, proud of how the parenting blogger community – and the blogging community in general – conducts itself.
And so we’ve put together Blog with Integrity, a voluntary pledge, complete with blog badge, for any and all bloggers (not just parents) who want a way to show their readers, marketers, the PR community, and certainly the press, that we are committed to integrity, responsibility and disclosure, and that a few bad apples do not speak for all of us. Not even close.
We may not have editors that we’re accountable to, but we do have each other.
I really hope you’ll sign.
101 shards of brilliance… read them below or add one
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This? This is awesome.
and this is why THIS community rocks.
excellent. rock on.
LOVE this!
Yes. Signed, Sealed & Delivered. I'm yours!
Thank you.
I don't normally add many badges to my site ('tis a boring, plain site. Eh.) However, this was worthy of messing with around with my HTML.
I have had to eat my words. It was not pretty. Perhaps, this badge will remind me to keep my snarky pie hole shut.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
I think it is amazing how strong the community is, how well they rally around each other in tragedy and celebration. This is just one more indication of your support for each other. I love it. I am honored to work with such fantastic individuals.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you all. And Cagey, don't lose the snark! I love snark! Good snark done well can be a thing of beauty.
Integrity doesn't mean losing your opinions – even the strong ones.
Signed, sealed and delivered, baby!
Well said.
Awesome. My very first badge. You should feel honored.
Here here!
*two thumbs up*
You are my hero.
This is definitely a badge worth wearing
Definitely. As soon as I get back on a computer, it goes up.
Exactly what we needed right now. This is awesome.
wonderful!
most excellent!
love it
I signed and my badge is up.
Oh, I totally blog with integrity ALL THE TIME.
But if someone were to offer me, say, a trip to Orlando, I would probably cave. But I certainly wouldn't cave for damn Swiffer wipes.
I guess this means I *could* be a whore, but only a high-dollar one, thank you very much.
YES.
Bravo.
Heather, integrity doesn't mean turning down trips to Orlando. Hell, I wouldn't! It means making sure you're honest and transparent with your coverage and that it doesn't go against any principles you have. Like, say you are part of the “Cut Florida Off Into the Ocean and Let It Fend For Itself” movement. Then accepting the trip would be bad.
Wait. I don't have a blog. Yet.
But when I do, ohohohohoho Mama! You can bet I will be wearing this baby with only the slightest bit of snark, sans the sanctimony.
Well said. And a great idea!
Excellent idea. Who says a community can't hold its own to standards of ethics and integrity? Nicely done!
YES!!!!!!!!!
I've joined and put the badge up, and now I'm not sure if I “fit” with the intent of this movement.
I run a frugal/shopping/coupon blog. I link to other bloggers who provide me with info. I am not one of the “spam frugal blogs” that are poppingup everywhere. I write relevant original content and encourage discussion. I won't post about deals that fall in to an “ethical grey area” when it comes to coupon use, even if 95% of the other frugal bloggers are posting the deal.
However, I also work with PR people on giveaways…but I turn down any reviews/giveaways for products that I don't wholeheartedly endorse. I am a member of affiliate networks, but I won't post a link if it isn't something for which I would personally sign up. I'm heading to Boston next week, courtesy of TJ Maxx/Marshalls…but I love those stores and have no problem writing about them (which is why I could never be a Walmart 11 Mom)
So much of my blog is tied up with PR and advertising…but it is all done in an honest way.
Yes – I love the writing, but my blog is a way to pay bills in my home. But I won't sacrifice my integrity just to pay the electric bill.
You mean like the Ethical Blogger badges that a lot of us have had from Pitch Bloggers for the last 6 months? This concept has already been done. Unfortunately the PB separate site didn't work out. The good thing is that it's back home on the MomDot forums.
THANK YOU!! I just had a discussion with a non-blogger about this last week. So timely!
I'm in. Give me my badge, sister.
I'm so honored to be working with you and Kristen and Susan on this effort.
Signing up immediately. Kudos.
Count me in as well.
Mindi, if you disclose your relationships and give your readers the opportunity to discern paid content from unpaid content, then you blog with integrity. This is not about review blogs versus non-review blogs.
Amanda, the ethical blogger badge, from what I could tell from the “pledge” (which is all but impossible to find on that site), seems like it was mostly designed to help PR people avoid bloggers who post negative reviews. In my opinion ethics is about being accountable to your readers, not to the PR person who sent you the item. But I'm not the singular arbiter of blog ethics. I'm sure there are other opinions and I'd welcome them.
Yay! Awesome.
It's a wonderful idea but it already exists.
http://www.momdot.com/blog/ethical-blogger/
Proudly wearing my badge.
Mom Dot's ethical blogger badge was specific to the Mom Dot community, and as Liz already pointed out, mostly covered issues related to reviews.
Blog with Integrity was created for *any* blogger, and embraces a broader code of conduct.
There's no reason someone couldn't do both. It's not a competition.
Can I blog with integrity without a badge?
Does the code of honor still work if Bossy lacks just the smallest fingernail's worth of integrity?
Im sorry, I find this terribly hypocritical considering I was talked about, blogged about, twittered about, and endured my family personally attacked on many levels throughout a basic blog challenge for our own community.
Ethics wont change because someone signed some online document and displayed a picture. Ethics are who you are behind closed doors and what you stand for when EVERYONE is looking.
Unfortunately, I believe those two things vary for a good handful of women.
As some of the commenters noted, the pitchbloggers/momdot ethical badge, utilized by over 500 bloggers, was meant for review and giveaway bloggers, and no, is not a competition in the slightest. Our program was started in Feb, so clearly its a different scenerio, although rooted in similar ideas.
It was not, however as was suggested, meant to ask bloggers to not post negative reviews, but rather open a line of communication and ensure both sides follow a code of conduct under professional guidelines that fit the services we were providing. The program was run by half PR and half bloggers, so the guidelines were set to fit both needs and keep the lines of communication open between them.
For the record, many bloggers were removed from our program for violating ethics agreements from stealing products and plagiarism. We practice what we preach.
Seeing as you are touting ethics, I am assuming you wouldn't want wrong information displayed on your pages.
This is not meant offensively, i am just stating it based on what I have been a party to.
Perhaps what you should be pushing is to stop cyber-bullying online, which is currently a huge problem, and clearly one that is run throughout the 'blogosphere'. You can read up on that at the http://www.ncpc.com.
I wish you luck for the idea, but do not believe that when it comes down to it, people change much from who they truly are.
And look around…who they are sometimes isnt worth fighting for.
Take care,
~Trisha
Love it! I don't usually put many badges on my sidebar (being the minimalist, clutterphobe that I am) but this is going to take top spot. Okay, right under “Search” – I hate having to look for the search boxes on blogs (but that's an aside).
Anyway, I think that if you live with integrity, everything else that you do (including blogging!) will be done with integrity. I'm just saying…
Anyway, finally – a blogging movement that I can wholeheartedly get behind! Woo Hoo! Can you tell that I'm excited?
Love it! LOVE. IT.
Chiming in again
Trisha — Hopefully the reminder in the pledge about respect for others — to attack ideas, not people — will help address the phenomenon you experienced.
I'm hesitant to respond, but I'm putting on my big girl thong (oh, who am I kidding, briefs) and going for it.
What bothers me about this is not the concept–integrity is good. But why is it something that we need to opt into? It's like rewarding people for telling the truth. That should be the standard, not the exception.
I guess it would make more sense to me if people put “I'm a shameless product whore but will lie to you about it on my blog” but I can see how it's harder to get people to put up that badge.
Thanks for your comment Trisha. I'm not entirely sure how this is hypocritical, considering noone who has signed this, as far as i can tell, has disparaged you personally- only an idea that you generated for a pr blackout. Any comments about your family are totally out of line and disgusting to me.
Indeed it seems that your own pledge does provide some very good guidance for review bloggers specifically, as to how to conduct oneself with pr, although it might be smart to add some guidance regarding transparency and disclosure which I would argue speaks to the core of “ethics” and is oddly absent.
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