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Well one could certainly contest a couple of points

1) Asking mfg. to pay to get reviewed definitely reduces the separation between "church and state" so to speak and opens the whole affair more easily to claims of biased reporting. Not a direction I would take it.

I would be more inclined to ask readers to pay for content...like Hifi Critic, for example.

This ties into the second point that Srajan rather smugly states that 12 years of reviewing has graduated him and his staff to "professional" status, whatever he means by that. I say let the readers decide about your professionalism rather than just making the claim and then expecting the mfg. to foot the bills for the reviews.

If your readers think you are professional and truly giving valuable advice with well written, concise and insightful reviews then they will pay.

IMO, a good examples of truly professional reviewers are the likes of Martin Colloms (Hifi Critic and many of others), Art Dudley (stereophile), Michael Fremer (Stereophile) etc.

Srajan feels to elevate himself to that status but when one reads his dense, turgid prose that is at times completely impenterable, one has to wonder. Read a Martin Colloms review and the difference in professionalism is obvious.

I suspect there will be a significant drop in startups clammoring for his attention once they have to pony up dough for a review. The one really great thing about 6 moons has always been Srajan's being the champion of the new and little boutique hifi companies...not his review writing.

Also, I would not consider the majority of his writing staff to be any better than hobbyists and certainly not professional journalists.

I used to review for Positive Feedback as an amateur reviewer and I did it for the love of auditioning and critically evaluating gear and to write up my observations. That was reward enough for the most part and I suspect that for most of Srajan's writers it is enough for them as well because they probably, like me, all have day jobs. Would I have wanted to get paid something substantial? Sure, but not directly from the mfg. I was going to review...this seems to me like I was being bought to write ad copy.

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  Kimber Kable  

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