In another life I wrote numerous reviews of hardware and software for national magazines. It's a tough beat; if you don't get gear early, your article is too late and gets lost in the crowd. Articles are planned months in advance, so getting stuff lined up from vendors takes a lot of time, and having a good relationship with both vendors and their PR firms is essential to keeping your editor happy. The workflow just required so much lead time between getting the hardware/software, interviewing interesting people, writing the article, creating images, working with copy editors etc. Time is money, and relevancy is always paramount.
Ethically, things have changed a lot. Apple used to be extremely generous with hardware, but as they became more successful (roughly around 2004-2005) they were much slower in answering requests for editorial "loaners." The print industry changed a bit too, and it was unusual to be allowed to keep review gear. So "freebies" aren't acceptable anymore, nor should they be.
Editorial direction is where things can get crazy. I was writing for one publication, and in a review of SMB firewalls, I was told to include one make that was clearly not up to the standard of the three units in the review. I included an honest evaluation, and discovered that this manufacturer was an advertiser in the publication. Later on, review units were always specified in advance, and the publication quickly became a trade/advertisement journal instead of one with honest, critical reviews.
Online pubs have it worse. Their timeframes are even more compressed, and online readers are more fickle. Having an unbiased site is tough, and recognizing biases (as a pub editor) is harder.
Comments
In another life I wrote numerous reviews of hardware and software for national magazines. It's a tough beat; if you don't get gear early, your article is too late and gets lost in the crowd. Articles are planned months in advance, so getting stuff lined up from vendors takes a lot of time, and having a good relationship with both vendors and their PR firms is essential to keeping your editor happy. The workflow just required so much lead time between getting the hardware/software, interviewing interesting people, writing the article, creating images, working with copy editors etc. Time is money, and relevancy is always paramount.
Ethically, things have changed a lot. Apple used to be extremely generous with hardware, but as they became more successful (roughly around 2004-2005) they were much slower in answering requests for editorial "loaners." The print industry changed a bit too, and it was unusual to be allowed to keep review gear. So "freebies" aren't acceptable anymore, nor should they be.
Editorial direction is where things can get crazy. I was writing for one publication, and in a review of SMB firewalls, I was told to include one make that was clearly not up to the standard of the three units in the review. I included an honest evaluation, and discovered that this manufacturer was an advertiser in the publication. Later on, review units were always specified in advance, and the publication quickly became a trade/advertisement journal instead of one with honest, critical reviews.
Online pubs have it worse. Their timeframes are even more compressed, and online readers are more fickle. Having an unbiased site is tough, and recognizing biases (as a pub editor) is harder.