He is not a journalist. He expresses his opinions about certain topics, so that he can get ads on his blog, get consultancy fees etc. There is far less conflict of interest here than tech sites receiving advertising from makers of products they review or newspapers taking advertising from car companies they cover. His relationship to the product in question is clearly visible to the public. If he says something about his product, you can either take his word for it or not, fully aware of his financial stake. With the two other examples above? You cannot.
He's quick enough to lecture others on professional ethics!
He's quick enough, for example, when others fail to correctly attribute a source, to start failing to attribute the Wall Street Journal. In a recent example, he
linked to criticism of a Wikipedia editor who had conflicts of interest. He clearly thinks of himself as a journalist and as a reader I expected him to follow some ethics on this.
As for the magnitude of the conflict, he could not have a bigger conflict of interest if he was Elon Musk writing the motoring column. Is he failing to report on great apps because it might threaten his personal gain? Can he even objectively judge what a great app is anymore, or are they now held to some greater standard because he wants to protect his personal profit?
What makes you think he owes it you and must go through the same struggle? Do you unplug all your electronics 2 hours a day in the afternoon to make sure you don't have an *unfair* advantage over developers living in India?
Eh? He had an idea, he got together with his friends and he implemented it into a product. Where is the sullying? Others are covering his product, because he is known for his sharp opinions about software UI design and there are many who are genuinely curious what he would do if he was the designer. Jealous?
My electricity supply is totally irrelevant; Gruber's fame has been built as a journalist/blogger (the line is blurry) and he continues to do that to this day (AFAIK, DaringFireball isn't shutting down). Take a look at
NPR's ethics handbook; they make it clear that you must avoid both real and apparent conflicts of interests (after all, you must remain trustworthy to your readers).
Journalists regularly recuse themselves from coverage on topics where they have a potential conflict (such as the political journalist whose spouse is an advisor to a particular campaign). Similarly, John Gruber would not have been the first journalist in history to forgo a business opportunity because it would have tainted his journalism or independence.
As a reader, I'm upset because it's a major, major ethical lapse from somebody I know should know better. It has absolutely reduced Gruber's trustworthiness in my eyes.
As an app developer, I think firstly that it's wrong for products to be promoted based on celebrity rather than merit, although I don't blame the outlets for covering it - I blame Gruber for getting himself in to this mess. Even that wouldn't be so bad, though, if it wasn't a journalist; that adds gross unprofessionalism to the mix.
Wikipedia defines conflicts of interest:
More generally, conflicts of interest can be defined as any situation in which an individual or corporation (either private or governmental) is in a position to exploit a professional or official capacity in some way for their personal or corporate benefit.
If he just wanted to make an app for creative reasons, he could have donated the money to charity, for example, to stop himself (in reality or in appearance) personally financially benefitting from his professional responsibilities as a journalist. Now that he's playing the App game for personal profits, his position has shifted enormously.
