Apr 22 2008
Why Was I Banned By Fodors?
Beat of Hawaii was (temporarily) banned from Fodors yesterday. When I logged on to Fodors last night, I was greeted with the following message:
Being banned did not feel good after being helpful to Hawaii travelers on their site. I wondered why they felt a need to ban a non-commercial website owner’s participation on their Hawaii forum?
The answer came this morning when I received a most gracious response from Katie, Fodors Community Manager:
The good news is that we’re back on Fodors. I think Katie’s message points to a problem we’ve seen in the blogosphere and one of the reasons why we started Beat of Hawaii.
The bottom line is that it’s not easy to know who you can trust, the authenticity of the writer and what commercial motives are behind their recommendations. One reason we have not accepted advertising on Beat of Hawaii, for example, is that we want to remain objective in our writing.
We’ll be continuing to discuss integrity in travel journalism, which is a passion of ours. We don’t have all the answers, but we have a lot of questions and thoughts. Two things we feel most strongly about are transparency and disclosure. We’ll talk more about that and look forward to having a dialogue with you, our readers.
Thank you Fodors for your forums and for helping bring this situation to light.
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glad you worked things out with fodors
The banning was unfortunate, but good on Fodors for the quick and personal reply. I certainly appreciate what they’re dealing with. I run the HawaiiThreads.com message board, and things have gotten to the point where I essentially interview every new member before granting posting permissions. Out of a hundred signups a week, all but three or four are genuine, everyday people hoping for some friendly talkstory. The rest are shilling pills, porn, or looking to do some SEO on lucrative travel keywords. It seems antithetical to the aloha spirit to be so protective, but the commercial maelstrom on the web makes it necessary.
Hi G and Ryan,
Thank you both for your comments!
The internet is certainly a strange and mysterious, while wonderful place. I’m just relieved that the issue got resolved.
Aloha,
Jeff