In the interest of Full Disclosure

It's been revealed that much like that columnist that I had never heard of who was paid by a PR firm hired by the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind program, which advocated things the columnist had apparently advocated for free for many years, bloggers are not immune to accepting money for doing what they would be doing anyway. The Wall Street Journal reveals that the Howard Dean campaign hired bloggers to write good things about the campaign in their blogs.

Also one of the New York Times Magazine's "Ideas of the Year" for 2004 was blogging as advertisement with Nike's now defuct blog, "Art of Speed". Unfortunately I missed the 2003 blog associated with Dr. Pepper/7-Up's roll out of their Raging Cow milk products, and also the associated Raging Cow boycott blog

This has caused me to think that I should, in the interest of full disclosure report that my income comes from the Univerisity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While they do not pay me to blog on their behalf, on the off chance that I were to unearth something big about the university and their policy regarding this or that, I felt this should be made clear. I have never received payment of any kind for blogging. Although I would gladly take some though although I'd prefer it in the form of reader donations. Yes, it's pledge week here at blog_eric(x). Anything you can do to help will be greatly appreciated.