BLOG WITH INTEGRITY Pledge

At the bottom of my pages you will find a “Blog with Integrity” badge, but what does it mean?

Here’s the official pledge I agreed to, in order to display the badge on my site:

• By displaying the Blog with Integrity badge or signing the pledge, I assert that the trust of my readers and the blogging community is important to me.
• I treat others respectfully, attacking ideas and not people. I also welcome respectful disagreement with my own ideas.
• I believe in intellectual property rights, providing links, citing sources, and crediting inspiration where appropriate.
• I disclose my material relationships, policies and business practices. My readers will know the difference between editorial, advertorial, and advertising, should I choose to have it. If I do sponsored or paid posts, they are clearly marked.
• When collaborating with marketers and PR professionals, I handle myself professionally and abide by basic journalistic standards.
• I always present my honest opinions to the best of my ability.
• I own my words. Even if I occasionally have to eat them.

Here’s how I’m living by this Pledge:

1. If I leverage other peoples content I’ll credit them for it. When I use other peoples photo’s I add a copyright line at the end of the post, and when I excerpt other people’s content, I always attribute it to them, and provide a link back to the source content on their site. If there’s no copyright or source link, your assumption should be that I am the owner and generator of the content.
2. None of my content is for profit, I am not being paid to create content about places, locations, restaurants etc. When I include an establishment on my site, it’s because I want to share it with you, and raise the awareness of it’s existence, not because I’m being paid to do so.
3. None of my links to external sites are Sponsored Links, i.e. I don’t get paid to send you to somebody’s site.  If at a later date, I choose to add Sponsored Links, I will make sure it is obvious that you are clicking on a link that I could benefit from.*

Page updated 1/1/12:

*All links on the Bookstore Page for Amazon products are part of an affiliate programme