I don’t know what all the fuss is about. ZDN is trying new business models. Dan’s a great guiy but he’s gotta trade for his masters and this is one way to do it without incurring fixed costs.

But it begs the question: Do you skew to what the audience wants and so end up in ‘lowest common denominator’ land or do you push content boundaries, rewarding those who are taking big risks in devoting their time to things that may not be immediately obvious but which carry value over the long term?

We’re miles off getting business models that are fair to all concerned. Click through is one of many possible new media business models. None of which are fully formed. Most of which are not rewarding authors.

Love the irony, you can’t make this stuff up. Edelman should get a harder ride as should Steve…those in glass houses should not cast stones…frankly we shouldn’t waste that much time on this though…as long as there’s disclosure its up to the reader to filter what’s what on their own. But seriously, pay per click? How is that any different than someone who’s running Google AdWords…isn’t that person also inclined to write something controversial in order to generate clicks?

Frankly I find this whole meme irritating.

I think the issue here is that Steve is pointing out that Zdnet is paying per pageview /hits stats. This itself ,is a new business model in emergence. Whereas the other payperpost scenario’s are based per post. You blog and you get a couple of bucks, regardless of viewpoint.

Having said that, why are we asking eldeman to render disclosure or every story / project / post ? What is a disclosure ? Does it tell the public the information they need to know ? or is yet that they just place broiler template in every post ? What is the bar that is being raised and how high ?

Yes, the Walmart situation was pathetic, that I’ll agree. those are the type of things that we need to know, it the blog a propped up behind or not !!