Brad McCarty for The Next Web:
Let’s pretend that you’re a blogger. You’re given the chance to review new, hot hardware from a major company. All that’s required is that you participate in some tasks, but these tasks would fit into your coverage so you agree. In return you get to be one of the first to go hands-on with devices and give your opinion on them. Sounds like a good deal? Well that’s what a couple of Indian participants in Samsung’s Mob!ler program thought too, until Samsung threatened to leave them stranded in Berlin, Germany.
This is an ugly story that makes Samsung look like a bunch of assholes.
I think Clinton Jeff is being disingenuous about expecting to maintain journalistic credibility after accepting Samsung’s offer to fly him from India to Germany and put him up in a hotel. Junkets aren’t cheap, even for global companies like Samsung. Quid pro quo, Clarice.
As Robert Heinlein noted in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
That moment when wanna-be journalists realize that taking freebies of any significance means they’re not journalists.
Is there such a thing as “free as in beer” or “free as in speech”
“If you’re a Prostitute, don’t be surprised when…”
http://doamm.com/2012/09/02/if-youre-a-prostitute-dont-be-surprised-when/
Just shows how dumb Samsung really is. Why not just hire people in Germany and pay them to stand there? Why fly some guys from around the world for more money? They could have probably paid some young college kids a few bucks an hour to stand there and hand out crap.
Also, they should have made sure they had round trip tickets in hand. Non-refundable round trip tickets.
Yeah, sorry to say but the constant refrain of “this isn’t uncommon” left me scratching my head. Not that what Samsung apparently tried to pull was anything less than scuzzy, though.
Think of how many tech kiddies who are now making their names by blogging without having gone through any kind of training that might prepare them for this.