#EthicsInJournalism

Every day my inbox fills with scammy, scummy come-ons from folks who are trying to sell TTAC on allowing them to guest post.

They usually work like this – the “person” (emails could be coming from someone operating under a pseudonym, or even a bot) behind the email is either offering to pay us to run a guest post, written by them, that would create a bunch of links back to whatever product they’re hawking.

If you follow the auto-journo cool kids on Twitter… get a life! Seriously! Go out and learn to fly an airplane! Take your children camping! Volunteer at your local soup kitchen this November and help the homeless make it through Thanksgiving with dignity!

Anyway, there were a few dramatic Tweetstorms and whatnot lately. The first one is partially recapitulated above. Occasional Motor Trend contributor and brand advocate for Castrol and Meguiar’s, Jessi Lang, decided to dig up some old tweet by The Smoking Tire’s Matt Farah. I suspect she did this because Matt’s star is rising while her own personal profile in the business spiked a long time ago. You have to take your opportunities at self-promotion where you can get them.