Michael Miller, the longtime editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, is leaving to go work for a venture capital firm. He’s going to continue hs blog at PC Mag, though. Frankly, I found this disclosure statement pretty mind-boggling:
No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Mr. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.
But no one gave him a free PC, so it’s cool, I guess.
Technorati tags: blogger ethics
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
Somehow I find this a lot more disturbing that any blogger getting a laptop deleivered to them. How are we to know if anything he writes about in the future won’t be a PR piece for something he or the VC firm he works for is backing.
I guess because it doesn’t have the name Microsoft attached to it somehow it is okay and will breeze through with nothing be said about his ethics but be damned anyone who touch MS with a ten foot pole.
Venture capital? That’s so 1990s. 🙂
What a sweetheart deal, he gets to keep a writing gig at a major web site, but also make bucks from the VCs. I hope he’s paying PCMag for that privilege, because I can’t see any benefit for them.
So let me get this right, if he wanted to he could pimp any company he wanted to on his blog without having to disclose if he is connected with or benefiting from it in any way. But then again, it is not as if he committed such a heinous act as being given a loaner laptop from MS so that is all right then and all is obviously above board. After all, articles written by someone bribed with a loaned $2000+ laptop are obviously more ethically questionable than an article written by someone pimping a company he may have a real financial interest in, isn’t it?