What's the price of a blogger's soul? In some cases, it's as little as dinner with a guest at a nice restaurant.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups. Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes."

This is as clear a violation of journalistic ethics as you will find. Real food critics dine anonymously and pay their own bills -- a known critic is likely to receive special treatment, which of course could make their experience less than indicative of what their readers can expect.

And then there's another problem: Is it really possible to be objective in a review when you aren't feeling the sting of having paid for it?

Blogs are certainly giving the traditional media a run for their money. But in order for the coup to be successful, they will have to adopt some of the ethical standards of the traditional media. For what it's worth, this is the policy for all blogs in the Weblogs Inc. (owned by AOL; includes BloggingStocks) network:

• Bloggers do not receive free products or services from the companies they write about.
• Bloggers do accept review units (e.g., a new cell phone at Engadget, a video game at Joystiq, or a week-long car loan at Autoblog); however, when they're finished reviewing products, they return these items to the manufacturers. If the manufacturers do not take the items back, we give them to our readers. This is the same editorial policy as the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.