Two days ago, I approved the post “Nine Best Milkshakes in Dallas” written by Danielle Glick (DallasFoodie). Sarah Reiss and I met with Danielle before she was asked to write one post a month. I knew Danielle was a social media marketer and that she had some clients in the food business. I asked her to write a disclaimer if she ever mentioned any of her clients in a post. (She was not paid by SideDish for the post and we paid for her milkshakes.) The milkshake post gave Twisted Root the highest rating of the group she sampled. Unfortunately, Twisted Root is one of Danielle’s clients. Within 24 hours, a sharp-eyed SideDish reader pointed the fact out to me. I pulled the post.
Obviously there was a miscommunication.On SideDish, we do everything we can to avoid a conflict of interest. We pay for the food we review, we let you know if a report is from a free event or media dinner, and if there is a conflict with a restaurateur, we report that as well. And we have a closet full of wigs to prove it.
UPDATE: Danielle Glick: “I had no reason to hide anything and every reason to try to prevent something negative from happening, so I was taking careful notes on what you said I needed to do. In Nancy’s follow-up article about me she wrote, “I asked her to write a disclaimer if she ever mentioned any of her clients in a post.”, but I do not have that statement in my notes or my memory. If I did, I would have gladly written such a disclaimer.”
