Scripting News: When in doubt, disclose

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

When in doubt, disclose

Interesting piece by Tim O'Reilly where he talks about a new set of products from Adobe. He also says they're presenting at his upcoming ETech conference.

O'Reilly is a board member at Adobe and presumably has an interest in the success of these products.

It's important to disclose conflicts, so the reader knows when they're reading a biased or interested opinion.

Mike Arrington, who invests in companies, often gets heat even though he carefully discloses when he has an interest in a company he's writing about.

I don't invest as often as either Tim or Mike, but when I write about a company I have an interest in, if there's any doubt whether it's clear, I disclose.

Update #1: Dan Rabin says that O'Reilly was on the board at Macromedia, which merged with Adobe, and he is not currently on the board of Adobe.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:32 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jan Mar