As every blog network owner knows, bloggers come and bloggers go. Quite often they go because they fail to grasp that a network is a business as well as a publisher.

Such folk make little distinction between their personal blogs and the commercial blogs they agree to write. Now there’s nothing inherently evil about that, just a misapprehension of what commercial blogging is all about. If they really want to learn, they do pretty quickly.

Where the main problem seems to lie is in the delicate area labelled “censorship”. Should you be free to write whatever you want and link to whomever you want?

Yes, if it’s your own blog on which you bear the full brunt of your actions. No, if you’re writing for a business which you expect to pay you for your work.

We all have our high horses that we reach for when we feel our “artistic integrity” is being suborned by some hairy ignoramus who “just doesn’t get it”. Well, I avoid hairy ignoramuses too, although I’m sometimes portrayed as one.

The argument is usually that there’s some principle involved in self-expression that overrides the economics of the activity itself. That’s not true, of course, because the activity wouldn’t exist were it not for a complicity with the economics of the case.

The exceptions are state-funded activities, which play to a limited cognoscenti, and often don’t impress the mass of people who ultimately pay for them.

Believe me, if a blog network doesn’t pay up over a shortish period of time, bloggers soon move on, despite the “purity” and non-monetary part of their calling. In the end, money always counts more than high “principles” which often boil down to the “freedom” to expectorate in every sentence they “write”.

There’s a very important difference between ethos and censorship, but it’s often neglected. Ethos embodies freedom, so writers can choose where and when they write, or not, as the case may be. It’s always stated clearly at the outset — or it wouldn’t be an ethos. If a writer chooses to write within that ethos, its restrictions are not censorship, just the normal boundaries of civilized existence.

Our ethos can be seen on this blog under Company Description. Here it is: “Distinctive, high-end, mature (not Adult), non-divisive content”. That means we don’t do snark, obscenity, gangsta rap, etc. If anyone wants to blog with us they know what to expect. Freedom to choose isn’t censorship.