Thank you! after a couple of weeks of smack downs, it's nice to get a positive response.

Kevin, I repeat: Credibility has nothing to do with truth. It has to do with believability. If no one came to your site to read your content, it doesn't matter how good and truthful it is. You have to ENGAGE with the readers before they will read your content. It is after the engagement and the continued to engagement that you become CREDIBLE. And that credibility has absolutely nothing to do with how you finance your operations. If Synopsys came to you and said they wanted to buy every single slot in your advertising/advertorial inventory I do not believe you would change how you report and cover industry news. That is what I believe about you. I also tend to believe that Brian Filler and Alex Wolfe and Mike Santarini and Ron Wilson currently and will continue to produce credible content, even though they get their paychecks from non-media corporations. And because they produce that content, those corporations they work for will grow in credibility among their audience. That's what is happening. We can conjecture whether the UBM communities are or will be credible in the new and distant future but based on their audience now, they are still a pretty damn big gorilla. That is NOT to say that your model is on the way out. I think in the current environment there is a place for smaller, focused media properties to prosper. However, I do also do NOT think that your is the ONLY way to produce content that is credible. Idealism may say the opposite, but reality seems to be on my side right now.

Kinda hared to say if they will sell them or shut them down, but yes, they are part of the community concept. I'm working on a white paper to come out sometime this week on what this means for PR, Advertising, marketing and engineering communities.

Your argument is not lost on me Girish. I used it myself for quite a while...until I realized it was no longer credible. What you argue for is the ideal. It is not the reality. And I am not saying I approve of the current environment, only that it is as it is. Credibility has nothing to do with the truth, but that people believe it. Science has given ample evidence to climate change, but polls suggest that more than half the world's population (slightly less than half of the US) think it is bogus. Gallup's recent confidence poll suggests that approximately 80 percent of the country lacks confidence in the media's ability to tell them the truth. Fox News get's ratings orders of magnitude of PBS. Again, credibility has everything to do with what people believe, not what is actually true. Since you brought up the "chicken/egg" analogy, I'd like to add the "Tree falling in the forest" concept to the mix. If an ethical journalist writes as story that no one reads, it may be true, but is it credible? In the end, it is the responsibility of the professional journalist (and I make that distinction specifically) to work his craft with all integrity, regardless of who signs the checks.

Kevin, what do you call publications (online and/or print) that the primary content is rewritten press releases? Objective journalism or marketing communications.

Wow, Dan. Something you and I completely agree on. ;)

Hey, don't dis state colleges (San Jose State, class if '74. Go Spartans!). I don't think you can measure credibility, but you can measure engagement and it comes on on all levels. As I've written before, Google and Facebook are boosting anything that is found to be "engaging." They measure that three ways: How much time was spent reading it (in other words anything more than 30 seconds, give or take); how many people commented on it (more than just likes which as Kevin pointed out doesn't mean you read it); and, most importantly, how many people shared the content. All of that boosts your ranking. Facebook goes a few step further giving greater importance to content shared that includes a graphic feature (photo or video); an appropriate link; and the popularity of the people liking or commenting on the content. Going to your father's advice, the only way you know you are credible is if you know you are credible. And if you are personally walking in integrity, or even if you are not, you will be recognized for that, especially in this social world. Bill, I am committed to walking in integrity, even to the point of publishing a statement of ethics. It is the most important aspect of my daily life. Anyone who says otherwise knows nothing about me. They can go ahead and talk to others about their doubts about me, but I know the truth. I believe you do the same. I am not prepared, however, to stand in judgement of others who decide to use a different mechanism for disseminating information and call it illegitimate only because it is different.. I am neither saying the old way of journalism is wrong or is obsolete, nor am I condemning emerging models. It is plain to see what is and isn't working, but some of the stuff is a little too new to make any judgement on it. What I do know is corporations are finding that the traditional way of doing communications with their market is not working effectively. I applaud every company that decides to inject level of objectivity and independence into that process. It's what I urged companies to do when I was a PR practitioner and generally got shut down over. What I'm finding now is those same companies that shut me down then, are calling me back and asking, "OK, so how do we do this integrity thing?" That is a positive step forward. And I hope it is embraced by the traditional media as a means of making what they report on more credible, rather than rewriting press releases.

Bill, not my words, but the general consensus that I've found in the market. Credibility doesn't come from a particular practice but whether the audience believes you are credible. Credibility arises from engagement in todays media. If your audience isn't engaged, that means you are not credible...even if you have a large mailing list or circulation . Ask Seth Godin or Brian Solis about this. Here's another salient point: People believe myth over fact, even when confronted with evidence. In the Sandy Hook massacre, MSNBC reported, without confirmation, that the killer's AR-15 was found in the trunk of the car. That is still being used by antigun control forces to negate gun control legislation... even though that report was refuted with evidence 48 hours later. The report was false, yet it was credible because it was engaging. Credibility is not necessarily truthful. That's why it becomes an issue of personal integrity. The MSNBC crew valued being "first" with the news rather than being accurate. Multiple "credible" news organizations, including CNN and NBC picked up the errant report as well, rather than confirm it themselves. The report was published for weeks in multiple news organizations. But its was actually weeks and months after the reports that the truth became engaging enough to refute the original report. Credible news organizations which could have avoided this massive error if they had actually engaged with the truly credible sources of information, have lost a significant level of credibility. Now let's apply this to our world of B2B information. The Gallup organization recently published results of the national confidence survey finding that in 2013, less than 15 percent of people have confidence that the print media is delivering credible content, essentially equal to corporations. However, confidence in corporations has been slowly rising over the past 10 years while confidence in media organizations has been dropping like a rock. The rise in corporate confidence over media confidence tracks with the trend o corporations to hire former journalists to run internal programs and with media companies decisions to reduce editorial investment. During this time we also find the rise of smaller non-traditional media sources, like EE journal and Extension Media that are actually growing and are developing a level of credibility greater than traditional media sources primarily because they are able to better engage with their much smaller audiences. So I state again, the name of the game is engagement, not credibility... because the former creates the latter.

Fixed. thanks for the clarification.

Bill, had a talk with Paul Miller about this late last week and will be writing something up soon. The name of the game is engagement, not credibility. I'll make the differentiation. Right now, however, I'm working on a white paper that will go into the changes happening that will be available on a limited basis. Stay tuned.

I thought that's what I said, Paul. But lets talk off line so I can see what I might be missing.