An eminently refusable offer.

An interesting missive showed up in the inbox:

We recently found your blog, and were very impressed by it. My partner and I are in the process of building a food blogging destination site, where we will feature content from high quality bloggers. The layout of the site will be like a newspaper, which we think will add legitimacy to our content. We will have multiple themes all related to the food industry, ranging from food sourcing, restuarants, recipes, etc. Much like a real newspaper's website, but focused on the culinary world.

We believe your blog could be a valuable addition to our website, and we would like your permission to use your blog content. Your blogs would be part of a highly reputable site, where only high quality content is delivered to an audience who is interested in a wide variety of culinary news.. We will be marketing our site aggressively, so your blogs would reach a much larger audience than they reach currently. Any content from you would reflect your name (real or blog, up to you), a picture, a bio, etc. We hope to have our bloggers become recognized names and personalities, and not just be content contributors. 

Our goal is to upload your blogs through an RSS feed each day. We won't require you to write more than you do now, although since we like what we see, the more the better! 

Hopefully you will consider this opportunity to reach a large audience with your excellent blogs. We are currently in the process of building the site, but are trying to get bloggers on board now. Please let us know your thoughts, and if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you.
(Redacted) & Redacted.
I do, actually have questions, but thought I might better pose them to Codland:
1) Are they serious?
2) Did I miss the part where I get kissed?
3) How is it that the form of a newspaper will give them "legitimacy"?
4) Should I be relieved that I would not be "required to write more than I do now"?
I welcome answers in the comments. 

Comments

[chzplz]

so, they're a content aggregator. They'll probably put ads on their site and try to make money that way.

If they're properly crediting you, and you reserve the right to pull out if you don't like the way it is going, it might not be a bad setup. You don't have must to lose, but you probably don't have much to gain. You'd get exposure, but they will be designing their site so that traffic goes back to them, not to the gurgling cod website.

Their approach suggests they might be semi-legit. They could just steal your content via RSS without telling/crediting you. That's not uncommon.

Some things to think about:

1) It definitely dilutes the gurgling cod "brand". Do you care?

2) They could turn out to be something unprofessional that you're embarrassed to be associated with.

3) If you are considering putting up ads on your own site, you'd lose some potential ad revenue to them. Some people will read your stuff there instead of here.

4) Unless they give you good reporting, you could lose some visibility into how many people are reading your stuff.

[Frodnesor]

eminently? Unless you're going to refuse it real soon?

[Rose's Lime]

WBUR has a site that highlights content from food bloggers around TLOTB&TC.

It neither has nor needs the legitimacy of a newspaper format since it's run by a legitimate broadcaster (though one that doesn't otherwise comment on food) for no ostensible commercial purpose other than to serve the public and extend the brand.

Julia from Grow. Cook. Eat. has submitted posts to this site. I'll ask her to comment on why she contributes.

John

[Julia]

There are all sorts of blog aggregators out there... as John mentioned, www.publicradiokitchen.com is one of them. FoodBuzz is another one.

With www.publicradiokitchen.com, they post a snippet of my blog posts and then directs them to my blog for the full article. It has definitely increased my traffic.

It doesn't look like you advertise here... so I don't think you're blogging to make money. What is your goal, then?

It really depends on how they lay out the content and credit/link you, as to whether you dilute or promote your brand.

[Derek]

I think the form of a newspaper will give them the near certainity of failure, considering a) their site sounds shitty, and b) that's what newspapers do now.

[Previouslyaim]

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