Any trained and qualified journalist knows that ethics are of great importance when writing an article. The topic, angle and genre of the article are irrelevant when it comes to ethics. They should always be present.

I would like to take Charl Norman to task in this regard. I read this Muti’d article from his blog and have an issue with the entire concept.

Firstly the list that Charl has compiled is obvious to an extent, no problem with that for the most part. However there are two inclusions that I think fall under conflict of interest. What is this list based upon? Opinion, choose, random selection?

How could Charl have written an article wherein he names two of his own products as top web startups to watch? It’s one thing to claim this on your personal blog as a blogger. But when the byline of the article states that the writer is a blogger, freelance journalist and web entrepreneur and then advertises his own blog I have a problem.

That is some sort of paid advertising or an advertorial article. I immediately get the feeling while reading the article that the idea for the article stems from a want to promote Blueworld and to a lesser extent ZoopedUp.

I am not saying this is the case, I am just saying that this is how I feel when I read the article.

Intelligence should be weary of making this sort of thing a habit. The article is fine but would have been better served written by a journalist not involved in the content directly. In fact the best outcome would and should have been to look at Charl’s blog post and ask an “objective” journalist to base a more extensive article on the blog post.

All that Intelligence have done (in a not-so-intelligent manner) is helped to promote Charl’s projects and along the way maybe include some other cool projects.

I am all for promotion of web startups in SA and any promotion is great. But comes a point where the line must be drawn. The thing that really urks me is the fact that this article is branded as journalism. There is a fine line between bloggers and journalists. They are not one in the same thing at all and don’t claim that they are. The article that appeared in the magazine was an expanded blog post for an author looking to self-advertise, on some level at least.

Ethics are becoming scarce and I hope this isn’t a trend that continues. New media is not a quick fix for larger magazines to fill pages with content. Let us not fall in to that trap.