We could hypothesize that one of the reasons why many people read blogs is becase they find them more reliable. That is, they’re produced by common people, not professional journalists. In the travel area, newspapers supplements and magazine articles are not always quite believable. All of the destinations are beautiful and, apparently, the traveller never has greater problems. Facing this, bloggers stories, who generally travel as mere tourists to the destinations they visit and pay the ticket with their own money, are usually pretty different. No one treats them better, simply; they’re not journalists and no one knows they will write a note about that destination that will probably be read by thousands of people in the Internet.

But this is changing. For some months now, some tourism agencies in the United States have started to pay bloggers to make references to certain locations. The trend is strong enough to make journalist focus on it. For example, the newspaper USA Today dedicated a note to “sponsored bloggers” analyzing the cases of blogs that tell stories of travellers in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, but that are actually sponsored by the tourism offices of the place. The main problem is, at least in the case of Milwaukee, readers are not aware of the district’s “financial help”.

These kind of facts are not surprising. We’ve seen for months how press and public relations agencies and the government are looking with interest at the topic of blogs. In the short term, its goal will be, same as with the press, to capture the agenda of these kind of media. Unlike the press, characterized for a limited number of media and professionals, bloggers are hundreds of thousands and to determine which are the more relevant takes its time. On top of that, it’s impossible to have personal contact with all of them. You can’t see them regularly at events or other types of meetings, as it’s the case of journalists and editors.

Of course, someone who writes a blog about a touristic destination and doesn’t reveal he’s received some kind of financial aid from the local authorities is not acting in the correct manner. It’s as incorrect as the media that cover certain destinations and don’t reveal either that the trip was financed by others, that are very interested in coopting the agendas of these media.

Since the press increasingly has less resources, it’s absolutely common that local governments, airlines or other parties pay for the trip of tourism journalists. That, of course, doesn’t mean we necessarily have to doubt of the honesty of those who write the notes. What grabs my attention, anyways, is that this information is not revealed, directly, in the notes. Are they afraid of people doubting them?

That this model of receiving sponsorship and not revealing it to the readers extends to blogs is defintely not good news. Up to now, many can believe these kind of sites are much more honest than a large part of the media. But these things are not easy to sustain. Trust is built with time; if readers feel cheated, they’ll simply start to see blogs as one more of the media, far from their interests and nearer to the government and press agencies needs. I have nothing against sponsored blogs as a mean of life for many people; but I find extremely questionable that a crucial fact for readers, such as a “sponsorship”, is not revealed to them.

Two “sponsored” blogs: Play in the city (Milwaukee) and Visit Pa (Philadelphia). More references to the topic can be found at Hyku. About blogs that have tourism as main theme, you can see this note at USA Today.