The “journalism ethic drama” of the week involves super-social-media maven Chris Brogan who was sponsored by Kmart to shop at their stores and then blog about it.

Playing the part of devil’s advocate (not fully but he points to good drawbacks) is web strategist Jeremiah Owyang (local SF resident) who says (in Twitter).

“Expect more brands to ‘buy’ bloggers and tweeters as the economy dips, this truly is cost effective marketing.”

Brogan’s response to the cries of foul is well thought out and hard to argue with. At the very least he can throw up his hands and say “hey, I was testing something out.”

I’m right there with him. I’ve been accused of journalistic ethics oddities with my idea for Spot.Us and “community funded reporting.”

The quote from the NY Times article says it best: “Critics say the idea of using crowdfunding to finance journalism raises some troubling questions. For example, if a neighborhood with an agenda pays for an article, how is that different from a tobacco company backing an article about smoking?”

To which I respond: Yes… it is VERY different if a neighborhood comes together to fund a journalist then if a company does.

Lets take Brogan’s experience as a perfect example: Imagine if it wasn’t Kmart itself that funded his shopping spree – but his readers. All Brogan needs is 50 of his readers to donate $10 each and that would be a $500 shopping spree at Kmart that Brogan could then report on. The guy has 27,000 followers on Twitter. Something tells me that even if he asked for something as selfish as this, 50 people (.001%) would respond.

If this happened his reporting would be trusted more since he is now beholden to a group of 50 individuals (his readers) than the company itself. In the end who the reporter is responsible to is EXACTLY why this ethical drama continues to rear its ugly head. By distributing the cost we can distribute who the reporter is responsible towards which means they are simply commissioned by and reporting for…. the public. Often journalists forget – that is who we are supposed to serve.

While I admit it would be hard to find 50 people to donate to Brogan’s holiday shopping spree, it is possible to find 50 people to donate towards reporting about on: if the Oakland Police department is living up to its duty to protect and serve, if the East Bay is prepared for an earthquake, etc.

These are investigations that serve a public good. Brogan can’t report on these (only because he lives in Boston) but is there a an expert East Bay blogger, podcaster, reporter who could? Do they have an audience of a few thousand? Could they ask their readers to support them for specific acts of reporting?

Seems possible to me

In the end, I support Brogan’s experimentation – but I also think Brogan and other uber-bloggers like himself need to look beyond mere sponsorship, which inevitably begs these questions, and look towards community funding.

Brogan should experiment with this. He’s seen the backlash of what happens when you take money from a single source – I’d love to see him create a pitch with a real value to his readers and see if they’ll support him to report on that.

Related posts:

1. Community Funded Reporting in Arizona!
2. Ana Marie Cox Employs – Community Funded Reporting
3. Community Funded Reporting – Its Time Has Come
4. Community Funded Reporting – If You Doubt It – tell that to folks who just raised 60k
5. This is How Spot Reporting Works