When did I tell you I was going to talk about the D80? In fact I made that painfully clear up front on my blog that I would only be blogging about the camera itself, if I decided to buy it.

I do find it interesting that some bloggers are saying I am a shill for Nikon just because I am involved in the program, while others such as yourself say I am obligated to blog about the camera, if I participate. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.

As far as the bloggers go, this is just like any other activity in that it entails risks. One risk that a blogger who accepts products for review and then provides those reviews is that the blogger could become perceived as a shill; unless of course, they have already been proven otherwise or are completely transparent as you recommend.

For the audience, again it is buyer beware. People can always rationalize a purchase because some celebrity type endorses it. But that does not mean that they can sue the celebrity if something goes wrong. Same with reading blogs. Some are authoritative, well researched and written. Some are attempts to say “look at me”. Some are outright deceptions that are created by money motivated marketing types.

If some day, I become a celebrity A-List Blogger and am approached by a company or marketing company through a blogger outreach program, I think I will be careful to read all the fine print and let my readers know that I was approached and accepted the offer to review the product. And if I like it, I will say so. And if I don’t, I will say so. But I will probably never return an item sent for review or accept an offer that only offers me a trial. If I can’t keep it, I will not review it.

Just my own personal policy…:)

But my point is, in short, if a blogger accepts the product and tells his or her readership what’s happening, then he or she has the obligation to either blog about it (as in some sort of review) or tell us as to why they they’re not going to do just that.

The difference in this case is that the blogger often accepts a product and then tells the readership. At that point he or she owes his or her readers some sort of follow up.

On the obligation to write: it is critical that the company providing the product do exactly as Nikon did — you cannot make it a quid pro quo. Of course, you hope that the bloggers will write about it, and if you’ve done the selection job properly, they will. But just as when we provide review product to mainstream media, we cannot require the review. Because then it is a paid review for sure. Those too have their place in this ecosystem but best we don’t confuse the two.