The Just Riding Along blog picked up on my post the other day about how reviews are done in the industry. Make sure you check out all good comments on it from the likes of Michael Browne (editor of Dirt Rag Magazine), Tim Jackson (Brand Manager for Masi Bikes), Cory Hemminger (editor for Making It Easier blog), etc. I have also gotten some emails from other people concerning my thoughts and rants.

Basically the “pay-to-play” system happens along with the one week reviews. It’s interesting to hear different people’s thoughts but everything I hear that justifies these kind of things boils down to cash money. Sure it’s easy for me to sit back and be condescending since I’m not depending on ad sales to pay my mortgage, but it still pisses me off.

Consumers like you and me are buying these magazines to get “professional” opinions on products when, come to find out, a lot of these reviews have money tilting the opinion and quick turn around review processes.

My challenge to these publications is to put a disclosure with each review. I want to know if this review came as part of an advertising package. I want to know how long and on what kind of terrain bikes were tested. And I sure as heck want to know if any palms were greased to move a product to the front of the review line.

We haven’t put this disclosure on every product we’ve reviewed up until now cause we didn’t know it was needed. But starting now every review on Blue Collar will have this disclosure front and center.