Not all media are created equal

Unfortunately the announcement never makes mention that Onley is also doing PR work.I actually discussed this with a few of the PR folks that I respect and they were generally surprised by the mixture. Ivy Eckerman, president of Spire Communications, said that Spire specifically is not representing companies that do logistics work.Soon thereafter, I got an e-mail from Onley:Let me be very clear: I have no interest in criticizing Onley, who I respect. And I'm not criticizing Spire Communications... or Eckerman... or PR people... none of them.If anything, I would critique Kerrigan -- and not even for doing hiring Onley. After all, we would gladly hire her back if that was an option. But I think one needs to be up front with readers. FCW and our sister publications publish what is called custom publications. These are publications where the content is written and edited with a company. It seeks to provide information, but it doesn't seek an objective perspective. Journalism standards, however, say that we have to label that.Over the past few weeks, I have been looking at Web 2.0 a lot -- at FCW's CIO Summit last week and generally because the issue fascinates me. But it also means that the world is much less black-and-white and more gray. I think that will be true for government, but it will also be true for journalism.I remember years ago I had a debate with family friends who were angry with newspapers because they didn't present "The Truth" -- capital Ts in both cases. My argument -- then and now -- is that there is no capital "T" Truth. The challenge these days is to get as much data as one can and make the best assessment one can. That is true in our personal lives -- who do we trust to work on our car... or care for our kids -- or in our work.Web 2.0 tools, of course, takes that to new levels by tapping in to the power of crowds, which argues that all of us are smarter then any one of us. So we seek , which taps into that knowledge base... and blog...All of this will mean changes for government... and journalism.Back to the point at hand... Let me describe how we deal with this 'conflict' issue.We are always trying to avoid the perception of conflict. That can be difficult -- very difficult sometimes. We have freelance writers who do other work. In fact, some of our writers do outside work. But we prohibit them from doing work related to any IT company -- or government agencies, for that matter. When we cover something that somehow involves something owned by our parent company, 1105 Media, we say so. (FOSE is a prime example.) That allows you to decide if we are covering something merely because it is a 1105 owned event or because it was really valuable. And we do allow writers -- both on staff and freelance -- to have outside lives. They can do outside work, but it cannot conflict -- or appear to conflict -- with the work they are doing for us. (One person does writing and PR for his church, for example.) Even with our columnists and comment pieces, we say where they are from and, when necessary, say what the potential conflict is and we allow you to decide.Again, I'm not trying to make a federal case out of all of this, and Kerrigan is a competitor, when it comes down to it... but readers need to have a reference point. They need to know where the information is coming from.It seems to me that Web 2.0 is a lot of work. It requires us to be much smarter. We all need to be skeptical about the world around us. We have to think much more. There is no Truth that comes down from on high. We have to collect all sorts of data and make assessments for ourselves.There is a role for all of this data, and readers are very smart. They will value them accordingly. But I think we need to be up front with readers because if we aren't, all of us get injured.I guess I'd be more comfortable if readers knew the editor also worked as a PR person. That would allow to decide if there is a conflict... or not.Ah, gray.The best of times...?