"Is blogging the new media?"

Whatever your opinion, we just want to share our passion for beauty.

So we were wandering along at IMATS, browsing and swatching away, when we were engaged in conversation by a woman we now know to be Sam Donald, who runs a website called Makeup Advice Forum. (No we're not bloody linking to her - there's a screencap below.)

She had clocked our press passes and wanted to know what publication we were with. She gave us her business card and chatted briefly, and she seemed nice enough, telling us "we've got a few bloggers on board at the site". We put the cards in our shopping bags and moved on, thinking nothing of it.

What we didn't realise however, was that beneath her civil exterior, Sam was positively fuming with resentment at the fact that MERE BLOGGERS had received IMATS press passes. How dare we? (How dare anyone, in fact, without due qualification or credentials, start up a Blogger account and make a success of it?)

Sam has written an impassioned article on her site, which apparently is "is qualified to sit as a [glossy] magazine" (which is why she had a press pass we suppose, although we've yet to speak to anyone today who has heard of it, or her.)

She has deleted our (very polite) comments from her site, so we will use our own (though apparently inferior) blog to respond to some of her points.

Sam believes that bloggers are not a legitimate part of what she calls "The Media" (capitalisation is hers). She's also had a good old read of our blog. She says our posts are too long and that we "talk for the sake of talking", amongst other things. Well, horses for courses, Sam. Your bitter screed about beauty bloggers and blogging was pretty long too.

Apparently we should adopt Sam's "journalistic style", which is summarised thus: "I talk about the good and bad points of a product and my articles have a start, a discussion, and a conclusion." Sounds a bit like my GCSE science write-ups, Sam. I think we'll stick with what we know.

On a factual note - Sam takes issue with this post about hygiene at department store makeup counters. She has got it into her head that the counter where Sarah nearly caught pink-eye was a Benefit counter. Though we allude to the fact that Benefit's hard-sell technique can be pretty OTT, it certainly wasn't stated or suggested in the post that Benefit have poor counter hygiene. The counter in question was NOT a Benefit counter, and we have no reason to believe that Benefit counters are in any way unsanitary. Sam has gotten the wrong end of the stick here and we apologise to Benefit on behalf of Sam, who has called their hygiene into doubt with her erroneous post.

She then expostulates about the fact that Sarah didn't march up to the management there and then and complain after the incident with the unsanitised pencil. Apparently this would have been better than "allowing them to be badmouthed across the internet." We didn't, though Sam. We deliberately left the company name out. It's you who is splashing the brand name "Benefit" around in association with poor hygiene. And it wasn't even a Benefit counter.

Additionally, Sam supposes that since Sarah went over to Clarins to borrow some remover to take the makeup off, she must have slagged off the brand to the Clarins staff too. Sam, not that it's any of your business, but actually no. The staff at Clarins were happy enough with the much more tactful explanation "I had a makeover that I don't really like."

A complaint was made later about counter hygiene, via the brand's website, after seeing comments on the blog and mulling it over a bit. It was explained in the article that Sarah did not want to get the sales girl in question scapegoated for what appeared to be a general problem. We hope that the complaint did result in some retraining at the counter, but we are not the makeup police. We're consumers.

Consumers. It says it in our About Us page, and it isn't something we're trying to hide. Unlike Sam, we don't want or expect to be classed alongside "glossy magazines", and we certainly don't wish to lay the law down about how our readers or other bloggers who stop by should think or behave. In fact, as with the example above, we get at least as much information and advice from our readers and the rest of the blogging community as we give out. Sam's antiquated model of teacher-pupil, decree-obey relationships between experts and lay people just doesn't hold any water in contemporary culture.

Sam appears to be worried that bloggers post irresponsibly, trashing products and swaying common opinion on things they know nothing about. Well Sam, that's quite flattering to us who write blogs, and quite insulting to those who read blogs, but it just doesn't work that way, at least not any more. People who write about beauty do not have guru-like respect automatically these days. They have to earn it by writing well, telling the truth, and giving readers content that they want to read.

"The Media" in its current incarnation, and these things called "WebLogs" that you've discovered Sam (apparently a discovery that in your book is something akin to finding maggots in your cold cream) are just not about that kind of prescriptivism. People read the blogs they like. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of blogs on beauty, written and read worldwide. People choose to read those they like and ignore those they don't. Brands and PR consultants recognise the power of blogging and are reaching out to bloggers all the time, creating relationships beneficial to both sides.

I think we should celebrate that variety and choice, and enjoy the richness of content available to us. Some of it may be poorly-written, biased, boring even, but there will always be something else to read if one or other blog doesn't float your boat. Blogging is democratic, in that readers choose. It's merit-based, in that the best blogs succeed. And it's open to everyone, in that anyone, professional or otherwise, can start a blog and make a go of it.

Whether snobs like Sam Donald like it or not.

Below is a screencap of Sam's article. We didn't include include all of the comments for space reasons - there are many, voicing different opinions. Almost like on a blog...