Disclosure and Trust

Merriam-Webster defines disclosure as “the act or an instance of disclosing.” The example sentence reads: “We demand full disclosure of the facts.” If it all sounds like courtroom speak that has nothing to do with garden blogging: think again.

The Need for a Disclosure Policy

Back when IZEA was known as PayPerPost, the need for a disclosure policy on garden blogs wasn't that great. Few garden bloggers were doing product reviews, going on all expenses paid trips, and selling posts on their blog to the lowest bidder. The backlash against these practices lead to IZEA launching the disclosure policy generator.

Recently, instances like Fern Richardson’s attempt at deception when Trey called her out for not disclosing that her participation in the Garden2Blog event was paid for lead to a lot of garden blogger drama. A lot of garden writers and bloggers were more upset with the calling out than with what she tried to pull. Instances like this go to show that we might need something similar to IZEA's disclosure policy for garden bloggers.

I don’t know what it is about the culture of professional writers, but they seem to have a hard time with transparency and citation of sources. But that’s a rant for another day.

How to be Transparent

Transparency isn’t something that’s just for professional writers. I don’t consider myself to be a professional writer, but I like to handle my garden blog in a professional manner. If a company sends me something to review or try in my garden I make a mention of it being free in the post. It’s that simple.

You don’t need to perform literary gymnastics and write a disclosure statement that kinda, sorta sounds like you got something for free or had someone pay for you to travel and put you up for an event.

“X sent me Y for free to review/grow,” “X paid for my trip to Y” within the body of your post would suffice. If you don’t fancy yourself a wordsmith you can borrow the verbiage of other disclosure statements from around the Internet. Keep it simple.

Why Transparency is Important

For me, transparency is important because I don’t like to be taken for a fool. It is a pet peeve of mine. I try to maintain my blog in a manner that doesn’t treat anyone who comes across it as a fool. I, as a person, deserve honesty and I think people who read my blog do too.

If you’re begrudgingly adding disclosure policies to posts to head off a Negative Nancy, or to protect yourself from criticism you should stop and see what’s wrong with your moral compass because it's broken. Also, take a moment to examine why you think so poorly of your readers.

Trust

Doug Green published a post recently that I think you should read. While he doesn’t mention any names, if you’re active on Twitter or Facebook you can probably guess which garden bloggers and which brands he’s talking about.

I’d like to close this post with a commentary about some of the garden blogger drama on social media from the past year that I didn’t get a chance to address here. My feelings are succinctly expressed by “suck it,” but I think are more humors expressed by paraphrasing Cybil Shepherd in the made for television movie, Martha, Inc.

“I’m not here to lower myself to your standards. I’m here to raise you up to mine.”

Get Published: Got Stink Bug Photos?

Mary Schier (blogger at My Northern Garden) editor of Northern Gardener magazine is looking for a creative photo of a brown marmorated stink bug  for pay. Do you have a high res photo of a brown marmorated stink bug in a garden setting?

I licensed them a picture of red wigglers a while back, and I believe this winter they published an article by In The Garden Online with photos by Chiot's Run. So I think between the three of us we can vouch for Mary if you aren't acquainted with her. If you have a photo of a brown marmorated stink bug just sitting around your hard drive go to Mary's blog and send her a message.

Blogger Extracts Payment From Newspaper Publisher That Plagiarized Him

This is too sweet not to share. A blogger found that a local newspaper had plagiarized a post of his, and to add insult to injury didn't even provide him with a byline. So, armed with a letter, invoice and a camera he went down tot he office of the newspaper and this happened.

via Gawker.

Problem with Gravatar Comments on WordPress

As a blogger that uses Blogger, the comment feature of WordPress blogs has always been something I've admired and been envious of. They have always been "open" and easy to use. When the company that owns WordPress acquired Gravatar it made using the comment feature that much nicer. I could comment on WordPress blogs and display my logo in the comments like I do in the comments of Blogger blogs. Last month after trying to leave comments on blogs like Plant Propaganda and Theatrum Botanicum I was met with the page pictured above. I've never seen this before and I had never been asked to sign in when using my Gravatar before. Any of you WordPress people know why I suddenly need to sign in when commenting on WordPress blogs? I suppose I could try to find out what my password is, but aint nobody got time for that!

Anyway, all you WordPress people I visited your garden blogs and would've left you a comment except for that stupid screen above.

P. Allen Smith and Demand Media: Adding Insult to Injury

Hi Mr. Brown Thumb,

I’m reaching out from eHow Home’s YouTube channel where we’ve been working closely with PBS star P.Allen Smith to create great gardening/design video tips and how-to’s the past few months. We’re big fans of your site and would love to work together to provide some of this content for your readers!

We’ve also been working with P. Allen on a “Garden Home Challenge” series where we’ve challenged him to create an eco-friendly home in 150 days with $150,000. There’s a great clip of Allen talking about the challenge that sets the scene fantastically that you can view and embed on the site here: [Redacted]

I’d love to know what kind of information your readers would most want to know from P. Allen, as well. Just let me know your thoughts after you’ve taken a look at the channel [Redacted] and I can provide to the larger team to potentially be implemented in future shows/episodes.

Let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to working together!


Michelle 


Dear Michelle,


Thank you for your Email today. You don’t have to introduce P. Allen Smith to me; I’ve been a viewer of his television show for years. I’m also aware of the partnership between P. Allen Smith and Demand Media. I got the PR blasts from Rubenstein Communications, Inc., back in March, and I follow his Twitter account so I’ve seen many tweets about this. 


I’m so excited about the possibility of you guys creating content for my readers that I’m about to wet my plants. You see, for years the “writers” that your company employs have been taking content from garden blogs like mine and changing a few words around and publishing them on eHow and Garden Guides. 


I know a lot of people are dismissive of Demand Media as spam and an article mill, but I have to commend you all on your ability to make billions off of the backs of underpaid writers, and the garden bloggers they copy. We, unbeknownst you, have been working together for years on creating “content.” Here’s a screenshot of a search for “MrBrownThumb” on your Garden Guides website:

So it’s fitting that after years of creating content for you that you would now like to create content for me. I wonder if the content you help create for my audience will eventually be recycled into a post for your website like so may of my other posts. Would that be what they call irony? 


My blog is your blog. After all, my posts are already yours.   


Let’s do this!


mrbrownthumb

Look, I know there are no new ideas, but it is a source of pride for me that what I’ve been blogging these past few years wasn’t ripped from garden books, magazines and other blogs. Sometimes a post can take up to a year to publish from the moment I have the idea to the moment it goes live on the blog. I don’t use stock photos and I don’t blog about things I’m not actually doing/growing in my garden, so my garden blog takes a bit of work. It’s not the best, but it’s mine, and this request is particularly grating considering.

A Google search or two may have come up with results that would have indicated I was probably not the best blogger to approach with this pitch. I'm not a fan of Demand Media and I've been public about this. Lately I've been getting a lot of pitches that do not fit me, and it's getting a little annoying. There are search boxes on blogs, PR people, learn to use them.

P. Allen Smith* has every right to make money and partner with whatever company he wants. As an admirer of what he has been able to accomplish I find it hard to promote what he’s doing when he’s associating with such unsavory characters as of late.

* I met him last year at the Independent Garden Center Show and he was really personable. Even said that he’d read my tweets and in Awkward Penguin fashion I said, “That’s unfortunate.” You see, my Twitter feed is 95% me being stupid, 5% being an armchair activist, and 5% talking about gardening. So, it’s not something I’d really recommend for a serious garden professional.

Facebook's "Timeline" Coming to Facebook Pages.

On March 30, 2012 Facebook's Pages will be redesigned to show the new Timeline style of profile pages. Ugh. What may look cool as a profile page just looks confusing as a Facebook Page. Here's a preview of what my garden blog's Facebook Page looks like using the new Timeline interface. Where exactly am I suppose to share links? The all-in-one status button works for profiles, I suppose, but isn't a good choice for a Page where you primarily share links to articles and posts.

Garden Bloggers on the Cutting Edge: Example 192

In February of 2011 I blogged about the Global Garden Report of 2010 complied for Husqvarna and Gardena. The report attempts to categorize and contextualize garden bloggers and our role as garden communicators. At the time I highlighted a section of the report that reads in part, "Most often, garden bloggers do not represent the mainstream, but rather the cutting edge, showing the way to the future-though they would never admit that personally." They obviously didn't ask me because I will readily admit that garden bloggers are "the cutting edge." I mention that I'm a trend spotter all the time. Nobody takes me serious, but that doesn't stop me.

Yesterday I was linked by a friend to an article on the StarTribune titled, A growing divide on the gardening front. The article starts:

"Rhonda Hayes was scrolling through tweets when she linked to something that got under her skin. A young male blogger declared that he didn't consider himself a gardener because he wasn't "a middle-aged woman who's been doing it just for the beauty of it and not considering all the other aspects."

If the quote sounds familiar it may be because I created a post around it back in May 2011 that generated a big discussion about what a gardener was. What Rhonda Hayes is mentioned as linking to (although not noted) is my post here "Are "Gardeners" Middle-Aged Women?"

The article continues.

"I was like, 'Wait a minute, honey!'" said Hayes, who gardens in Wayzata. To her, the comment implied a dismissal of mature female gardeners as out-of-touch growers of pretty flowers, as opposed to trendy organic veggies. 

She fired off a tweet of her own, noting that she'd been "growing food before you were born." And she wasn't the only one who took offense. "Them's fightin' words," another reader commented."

If the "Them's fightin' words" quote sounds familiar it is because "the reader" is Katie and she said that it in the comments of the post.

The article goes on to flesh out the premise of the story by giving other examples of young gardeners gardening like this, and older gardeners gardening like that. The article ends with:

"Garden rifts can appear more heated online than they are in real life, McKusick said. “The blogosphere is different than the garden magazine world. The number of garden blogs has exploded, and people are competitive about their views, they want to get hits, so controversies happen as a way to stand apart. People are trying to be heard." 

But gardeners overall, and Minnesota gardeners in particular, are a tolerant bunch, preoccupied with their plants, not arguing in cyberspace. "Most gardeners aren't blogging," McKusick said. "They're too busy gardening.""

BUUUURN! Oh, wait a minute!

What are you suppose to be picking up here? What we have here is a sign of the outside world waking up and realizing what the Global Garden Report noted in 2010. Not only are we shaping gardening tastes, but our thoughts, observations, blog posts (and even comments left by our friends on our blogs) are now influencing the writings of professional garden writers and being repackaged for mainstream audiences. This is something that has been happening for years in celebrity gossip, technology, parenting, and fashion blogs. But is relatively new our corner of the Internet, and a sign of what was once a small niche is now being watched by many. These are exciting times.

I don't agree with the implication that garden bloggers aren't busy in Mr. McKusick's quote. To grow plants, photograph them, edit the photographs, blog about them, respond to comments, and answer follow-up questions is time consuming. Plus, many garden bloggers juggle real jobs and families. They're not blogging because they're not busy enough gardening, they're blogging because they have a passion for it.

This example of an article being inspired by a blog post follows on the heels of the attack launched on Colleen after her work and observations on the #OccupyGardens meme was copied by a garden writer and presented as her own. We just need one more example of a garden writer publishing an article inspired by a post on a garden blog without attributing it and we have ourselves an official trend to look for in 2012.

You heard is here first folks and you better source it.

Note: Mr. McKusick is the publisher of Northern Gardener. In 2010 I licensed two vermicomposting photographs to his publication. The author of the article linked above and Rhonda Hayes (also a contributor to the StarTribune) as of this writing as followers of mine on Twitter, though I've only had a limited number of interactions with Rhonda. After searching my social media stream I noticed the last time I was interested in talking about the growing divide on the gardening front trend was in November 2011. Now that it's been picked up by the mainstream media I think we can say the trend is on the decline or maybe even dead. Print media is always the last to notice trends.
Note2: If you're a big garden entity: I'm Garden Bloggers is still for sale. Call me, P.Allen Smith, Martha Stewart, Proven Winners before garden bloggers turn into the next mommy blogs.