I'd be interested in hearing more about Salon's policies vis-a-vis free loot. I know people who work in media and they get an astounding amount of swag. Do Salon writers get stuff? Do you know of anyone who gets so much they feel compelled to report it on their taxes?

Some sites have policies which clearly state that you cannot post ads in any disguise. We are bombarded with ads everywhere. It is getting pretty disgusting. HuffPo disguises movie ads by adding comment sections. I sent them an email about it and I object in the comment section in the vain hope that they will stop.

I'm sorry, but when was "mommy blogging" considered a "radical act" in the first place?

A former employer had a simple solution to swag. We'd get tons of CDs, books, DVDs, video games, gadgets, etc., submitted unsolicited for review. Everything was put into storage and a couple of times a year, an in-house sale was held. Books, CDs, video games and DVDs were all less than $5 apiece, and other items were priced reasonably, too. The big sale was right before Thanksgiving, and people did a lot of Christmas shopping. The money raised went to a local charity.

Yes, I lived off of the sale of review CDs while I published a music 'zine, the forerunner of the blog. I depended on free passes to shows for my social life. I got free t-shirts and other junk. I was poor, zines don't pay, and you gotta eat. Having said that, we never wrote about major label bands, and the labels didn't seem to care. They were still rubbing elbows with their market.

That, I am sure, is the best case scenario for pay for play. Whether to suck up to the advertiser is the traditional pull and tug of any publication from tiny to The Times. There's no difference here, other than that some of the ad dollars out there are trickling down to street level. Mom blogging could become an income stream for stay at homes, probably just as ethical as some of the things they'd have to do at a regular job. The readers who don't like that kind of journalism (what we used to call slut-rags) will go elsewhere. Mommy's page hits will go down, unless her writing and range keep readers there. Which is the best attribute of a successful publication anyway.

In his new book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price", Wired editor Chris Anderson predicts, quite convincingly, that digital transmission will drive the price of all print products to zero. What he cannot convincingly describe is how the work of independent journalists and artists will be funded.

As a former print journalist now working in another profession, here's where I think that support will come from: Nowhere. All paid writing in the future will be patronage work. Either that or the part-time material of hobbyists, who naturally will be poorly trained and easily discouraged.

Sure, here and there will be little lights of independent journalism, your odd Salon piece or an actually good blog like Nikki Finke's, but they will be itty bitty flashlights in a largely dark landscape.

Someday it will seem marvelous to remember when an industry of real professionals kept watch on our corporate and government masters. Well, if we can't even be bothered to spare a dollar a day for the truth, we deserve to get screwed.

The only thing most "mommy bloggers" are guilty of is lazy writing. When your blog broadcasts the supposed merits of the latest no-cal sweetener and stain remover, you're a walking advertisement, not a writer. Ethical? Maybe not. Boring? Definitely.

I have no problem with a blogger talking up a product or company with whom she has a business relationship, as long as that relationship is disclosed. This is the same rule that applies to all advertising and criticism, and bloggers, mommy or otherwise, shouldn't be exempt. Corporations who use this viral messaging tactic, of course, do so at their own risk, because they may be on the hook for the blogger's representations about the product, if there is a relationship there.

Fortunately, even when not explicitly disclosed, many of these bloggers are poor enough writers that it's glaringly obvious when they're shilling, as opposed to offering a truly personal opinion. Eventually readers will be able to sift out who is trustworthy as a reviewer (because they disclose, because they occasionally publish a negative review instead of tamping those down in case it hurts their ability to get free stuff, as many do) and those who are not trustworthy will languish in some Internet Siberia.

I don't read so-called "mommy bloggers." They all sound pretty much the same, their kids all look the same, and they're a circular support group that has deluded themselves into thinking that parenting gives them some sort of special insight that makes them better than the rest of us. So really, I find myself unable to care what products they hawk, although I get the feeling that parents in general probably sell out for the sake of convenience and expediency much more than they'd like us to believe. Fine. Glad I'm not one.

I used to work in PR (it's what happens when reporters can't find real, paying work.) I had to attend a conference one day, and one of our speakers was an individual from a well-known diaper company who treated us to a presentation on a recent PR campaign he'd implemented for the company. The campaign was all about getting mommy bloggers to buy into this company and then, as a result, blog positive stuff about their product. This company invited about a dozen women to their corporate headquarters, treated them to spa days and free products galore, had their top corporate employees come and meet them, etc. etc.

By the end of this trip, the women were enthralled with the company and couldn't stop raving about how great they were and what unbelievable corporate citizens they were and how superior their products were. Most, if not all, of the women went home and wrote GLOWING blogs about the trip.

PR campaign deemed tremendous success. The problem is that too many bloggers are just people sitting at home with a platform and no training in journalism ethics, or journalism anything. They get taken on a whirlwind trip and are simply not sophisticated enough to understand they're being used for publicity. I walked away from that conference very depressed. Blogging is a great tool, but it simply cannot replace traditional journalism. What happens when blogging becomes the dominant form of newsgathering and publication? Who will be there to investigate the diaper company? Will anyone ever know that the company is dumping chemicals into rivers in China or that it is exploiting workers in plants in Tennessee? (These are theoretical examples.)

Again, I can't help but feel depressed.