commbasics

This post is likely to piss off  a lot of people, but here goes.  The discussion regarding credibility and ethics related to sponsored-content as been civil and illuminating, and has generally reaffirmed my belief that there are now many forms of valid B2B communication, even if one believes one is morally superior to all others.  The one uncomfortable part of the discussion has been the veiled accusations of moral failure for certain individuals and organizations.  So last night I did a quick content snapshot of several publications. On one side I looked at sponsored-content sites, including New Tech Press in that category.  On the other side I looked at three sites that identify themselves as independent journalism . This is what I found.  On the independent sites, there were 40 to 50 pieces of content.  On one site, eight pieces were original and the other 42 were press releases , articles paid for by sponsors, and ads.  On the second s...

Something happened this week that brought up the issue of transparency, journalistic independence and why both are needed for a vibrant media that properly serves the industry.  As many of you know, I was asked to start a blog on EDA Cafe back in June and started a series of podcasts focusing on the bottom line of design automation.  in other words, finding out the industry could justify its existence financially to its customers.   We started out with a couple of interviews with the CEOs of Magma and Tanner EDA and then of the Real Intent CEO.  The first two readily admitted that figuring out the real ROI of EDA tools is something that has not been done well and needs to be done better.  The third interview had the same revelation, but you might notice that the interview is no longer available on EDA Cafe.  Real Intent lodged a complaint to EDA Cafe regarding the statement in the interview from the CEO that they could not accurately estimate the ...