We Want Media

For just over an hour last Monday, Engadget's own Peter Rojas sat down with the class and went over the finer points of running a major blog, the importance of credibility and the worst part of being a freelance journalist.

"I really, really hated being edited," said Rojas. "Blogging is so liberating, I got to finally write in my voice the way I wanted to and I got to write about this stuff in a way I wanted to."

This inevitably leads to Rojas appreciating the "freedom that you have as a blogger, but you also realize the responsibility that comes with [it.]" This of course being the age of WordPress and Movable Type, there are millions of blogs out there, each with a particular niche or subject.

So how does Rojas keep Engadget a major player?

Basically, through keeping "credible" by refusing industry favor-trading, like press junkets, and keeping "a strict separation between advertising and editorial," especially after past incidents he recalled at the defunct tech magazine Red Herring.

Still, someone tried about three weeks ago, Rojas recalled. In return for meeting with them, he'd get a free iPod Nano.

"I can buy myself an iPod Nano, but I can’t buy my credibility back."

Of course, this can be easier when your parent company is AOL/Time Warner, but Rojas chalks it up to being a smaller part of a bigger company.

But at the very end, I was left with one burning unanswered question: Just what did he write for Sci Fi Magazine ?

Update, 2/11 8:45 pm: As "Peter" (since it is unverified) says below in the comments, it was Sci Fi Magazine and not Sci Fi Wire as I had previously written. I regret the error...but the question still stands: what did you write on?