A Shill Is A Shill Is A....

...Paid Blogger?

Bob Mackin has the story in BIV:

Marketers of the in-receivership Olympic Village are paying the editor of well-known local culture webzine 'VancouverIsAwesome.com' to blog about the joys of life in the village – but it does not say on the website that he is being paid to do so.

Rennie Marketing Systems awarded the deal after receiving a single pitch from VancouverIsAwesome.com editor Bob Kronbauer...

In my opinion, the most interesting aspect of this story is the way Mr. Kronbauer justifies this as just one more 'awesome' aspect of what he does and where he lives while he simultaneously professes to not understand the larger issues of the 'The Village' as they actually pertain to all of Vancouver's (presumably 'awesome') citizens:

...“I was visiting the Village a lot as a resident of Mount Pleasant before we moved in and fell in love with it and wanted to share the stories of all the positive things that make it great,” Kronbauer said.

“Beyond the budget and all this stuff I really have no idea about as an average citizen, (I wanted) to sort of expose stories about what it's like to actually live there.”...

But here's the thing....

How, exactly, do readers know what Mr. Kronbauer thinks is really awesome and what he (ie. Mr. Kronbauer) thinks Mr. Rennie will think (is awesomer) to ensure that the cheques keep rolling in?


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