We chuckled earlier this week at Tom Scott’s journalism warning labels featured on the inventor’s website. Scott has created a series of labels designed to be printed onto Avery’s 5160 sticker sheets to mock the new breed of bad online journalism. It’s a smart, tongue-in-cheek joke with seemingly pointed relevance. Our favorite is the PR warning label which reads “Warning: This article is basically just a press release copied and pasted.” Others include jabs at unfounded medical research, unverified sources and plagiarism. Scott demonstrates how to use his handy little stickers on actual publications but notes that the articles used in his examples are not examples of bad journalism. We believe him, but we’re pretty positive that Scott’s labels could be used in most published pieces, especially online.

Underneath Scott’s parody lies a genuine commentary about crappy content. On a national level, the conversation about what we read and where it comes from has been on the lips of media watchers, politicians and marketers all summer long. A few weeks back, it was Wikileaks that stirred the pot regarding journalism ethics. Then Digg got some much-needed press a couple of days ago when news outlets wondered if the site was responsible for tainting journalism objectivity. Yet the ongoing dilemma of new media and online journalism appears to be one of content.

As marketers, we are constantly testing the quality of our content to make sure it fairly represents our clients and products and small businesses. Yet big time media appears to be struggling with the marriage of traditional reporting and Internet spin. First-rate content, news or otherwise, is now the litmus test for a website’s respectability. User-generated content, too, has become a delicate balance between letting the readers sound off and having the nut jobs take over the tone of the content.

Scott’s labels, while certainly parody, are not off-base when it comes to the looming issue of content gone bad and journalism gone wrong. So the question we’d like to toss your way, dearest readers, is how does content affect your web reading experience? And while you’re at it, tell us some labels you’d like to apply to bad Internet writing.

We know by now that journalism is far from dead— even if newspapers are just hanging on by a thread. If anything, journalism has multiplied by user-created stories, old media magnets branching out in new ways and social media turned into a source for news-feeds. With these never ending options, journalism is an ever-changing beast that at times seems out of control. Now more than ever we digest Internet fodder as news while talk shows swerve into political territory.

The blurry lines dividing news and entertainment got even blurrier last week with WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks ended up on the tongues of big-time news anchors and political pundits thanks to its unflinching look inside the Afghanistan war. A hefty, 92,000-page classified U.S. military document wound up on the site, sparking debates about journalism ethics and new media boundaries. The bare bones website is a safe haven for anonymous whistle-blowers; indeed, WikiLeaks has made minor headlines in the past four years with classified military videos and leaked company documents. WikiLeaks gave three major newspapers a sneak peek at the documents before posting them on the site. Within hours, a tornado of publicity was unleashed and a national debate was in full swing. Bloggers say that WikiLeaks is the future of journalism and democracy while others have declared the site as yet another irresponsible byproduct of the Internet age.

The WikiLeaks fury is another sign of growing pains and tug of war between traditional media and online media. Is Internet journalism out of control? Yes — but, then again, it has been so for some time. And wasn’t television the same way in its early days? Whether WikiLeaks has crossed a line or sunk to a new low is kind of beside the point. The real question here is: Is it time for content to be monitored and edited like television? It web content an FCC issue? As traditional journalism continues to morph, eventually we’ll collectively have to figure out what is journalism online and how do we insure that the public is receiving the most accurate information.

So let’s lob this heady issue over to you, dear readers. Is WikiLeaks the wave of the future or the end of journalism as we know it?

Company blogs for businesses big and small are a pretty instant way to combat tough criticism while talking directly to your audience. From Kodak to Martha Stewart, we’ve seen blogs help reinvent brands that had previously been through the wringer.

So the ultimate endorsement for company blogging came this week when the White House released a 6,200 word blog defending their response to the April 20th explosion and more…

Emmy winning hit Mad Men notwithstanding, turning to big agencies has fallen out of vogue. Between that blasted “economy sucks” excuse and the ease of using freelancers and more…

It was the gastric gut bomb heard ’round the world when Kentucky Fried Chicken unleashed The Double Down Sandwich a few weeks back. This culinary concoction made of two fried chicken breasts serving as a bun with melted cheese and two strips of crispy bacon, created a marketing frenzy and set off a blogging firestorm unlike any fast food product we’ve seen in quite some time. At nearly 600 grams of more…

What do the Nicolette Sheridan versus Desperate Housewives lawsuit, controversial people rating site Unvarnished and Lil Wayne tweeting from prison all have in common? If you answered all stories you’d expect to drive you insane by the end of the week, you are correct.  Little stories like this, though, seem to more…

It is always intriguing in this new age of marketing who “gets it” and who doesn’t it.

There are brands that you are sure would utilize the latest and greatest in social media marketing, blogging, online PR, intelligent brand marketing but they seem to miss the boat entirely. And there are those who smartly play the whole game and are willing to change along with latest techniques while still remaining uniquely themselves.  So I would like to salute more…

Verbal spats between digital devotees and bookworms have been popping up all over message boards for quite sometime. On one side, the techies say that contrary to popular belief they do in fact read and they insist genius can be found online. On the other side, the bookies say that computerized books and publications are the death toll for genuine intellectual written material. This spat jumped off the Internet and into a hotel conference room on more…

The good folks over at the Pew Center’s Internet and American life project along with the Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted a survey to find out where and how Americans get their news. The results that were released yesterday and  splashed all over any website that would sit still (bravo, Pew, bravo!) won’t cause any of  us online junkies to fall out of our chair. As expected, TV is where most Americans still get their news with the Internet running a close second and more…

It’s been another exciting week in the world of all things Google. The little search engine with the unassuming primary colored logo has generated more headlines recently than American Idol and Obama combined. Let’s take a look at what the world’s most popular website has been up to.

Just yesterday, Google threw their hat back into the social media arena with the launch of Buzz. Google promises that Buzz will be the faster and easier way to share pictures and videos with friends and family who already belong to Gmail. Naturally Buzz is instantly compatible with smart phones and employs the latest in GPS location to gather information from neighboring businesses and hot spots. Its a gutsy move considering that Google has failed to nab the social marketing scene like Facebook has. From a marketing standpoint, Buzz could provide some much needed oomph to the social media marketing game. Buzz’s new features and Google-like accessability are appealing and send the mind reeling into more…