The guys developing Pulpfiction , the new rss reader for OSX are doing a great job of fielding feedback in anopen forum with their [future] users.

This is, unfortunately, what weblogging is all about-- personal opinion and personal experience. I'm not a journalist, nor do I pretend to be; I'm neither paid for my efforts nor do I expect payment. My weblog is, indeed, my hobby, my soapbox, and my diary; so I tend to enjoy just doing... whatever.

I make my living writing for a Mac magazine in the UK, and I'd be curious to know from Chris why he feels particularly obligated to review the software he is given. Am I missing something, or could you not simply decide which titles to review on the basis of their quality rather than anything else? Of course, you then get into the sticky realm of why give magazine space to poor products, to which the answer is usually "if people are in danger of spending money on it, they should be told it's bad because...".

As for offending the developers, well, that's not where your allegiances should lie. Your first duty as a reporter of any kind is to your readers (and thence to nice disparate concepts like truth), and Erik is right, I think, to point out that what software developers like most (other than bug-free code, or possibly a pepperoni with extra jalapeño) is constructive criticism.

One of the best things about shareware (and please don't let's get bogged down in defining the term) has always been how close customers can get to those who actually code the damn software, and this is even more true of the relationship between developer and journalist.

My buddy list is stuffed full of developers, and the beauty of IM is that it's dead easy for these guys to be both proactive and reactive in dealing with the press and anticipating published criticisms before they can be an issue. I have a very good relationship with lots of developers over IM; it's a great way to bat ideas back and forward, and so long as the final printed criticisms are constructive, I haven't yet had a developer get narked by my comments.

With his MacAddict background, Erik is better placed than most developers to understand the dynamic between software companies and journos.

One of the most worrying things in Chris's blog though is his gripe about keyboard access. I think he's broadly correct, and I may be falling foul of the lack of expression in the written word, but it seems to me that he's guilty of that very worst reviewer affliction: reviewing for himself alone.

I don't mean to suggest that Chris would be so unprofessional as to not take into account the needs of other users, but that like so many reviewers he appears to have a personal hobby horse that he gets on when reviewing stuff.

I'd feel uncomfortable reading a review of something by a writer if I knew there was one thing, one particular thing that he was looking for. Chris makes a good point about accessibility, and as I say he does have reason to make the criticism of poor keyboard support, but he does appear to be particularly biased.

We divide the review space we have between products people want to know about and products we think they'd like to know about. Titles from small independent developers tend to all into the latter category, and we're happy to get serials for them so we can give 'em a good workout.

If they deserve it, we'll tell our readers. If they don't, we'll tell the developers why.

PS- During testing I've noticed your software doesn't blow me daily. Will this be part of the 1.1 release? Will there be a 'blowjob interval' preference?

Anyway, we're Mac users. I specifically avoided the word "journalist" because - let's face it - how many times (especially between 1992-1999) did we face so much crap from "journalists."

Chris, all I ask is that you trust us to receive honest feedback. There's a difference between being mean-spirited and offering constructive feedback. We trust Mac users to do the latter.

'Salt' doesn't pertain directly to FSS or to PulpFiction, but it was (given the timing) clearly inspired by the situation. Meanwhile, I'm going to get back to work, and I'll have my review up sometime soon.