Anne Kadet of SmartMoney Magazine practices "Thin Journalism"!

I just read Anne Kadet's article entitled "A Penny for your Clicks" and I am really stunned that a journalist would practice such "thin journalism". Her portrayal of Affiliate Marketing is such a thin analysis, such a skimming piece of the affiliate world, that I felt I had to comment.

The article is superficial and inaccurate overall, and only describes a tiny bit of a very big industry that makes the world of online commerce more democratic. Here is her defination of affiliate marketing from the article:

"affiliate marketing is a mom-and-pop sliver of the online advertising business with a big impact. Most participants are regular folks who work from home, posting online ads and promotional-text links for thousands of brands,"

Well, she got the part about "big impact" correct, but she unfairly categorizes us all as simpletons who post ads with scraped content and only affiliate links, and on and on she goes. I really don't practice the kind of affiliate marketing she describes, and I see clearly that she has purposefully defined the entire industry as a spam generating polluter of the web.

Anne wrote a piece her editors should have screened better, and she needs to interview some affiliates who lead the industry to find out how they differ dramatically from the "thin description" she has assigned to us.

She also completely quoted Jason Calcanis out of context as you can clearly see by reviewing some of his keynote address at the Affiliate Summit. Using an opening comment and expanding upon it the way she did actually makes me think she is the living form of "thin journalist"

Anne took a joke Jason Calcanis told at the beginning of his address, and turned it into a theme. Too bad, and it's no batter than what we see in the political arena where they do the same sleazy thing. Thin journalism has no place in the legitimate world of SmartMoney Magazine. JMHO