The row started on Friday when the ValleyWag revealed how some "star boggers" had taken some cash from Federated Media to repeat some Microsoft sloganeering in copy on their websites.

Michael Arrington tells all how his Techcrunch site became "people-ready". Gigaom's Om Malik talks about when a business becomes "people ready". Others named and shamed include Paul Kedrosky and Matt Marshall of Venture Beat, as well as Fred Wilson, the blogger-investor. Ads with the Volish motto appear on the blogger's site.

When News.com's Charles Cooper got all pious about the story warning people of the dangers of taking Volish gifts Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington wrote to him to call him an idiot. Malik has since wrote on his blog that he has asked Federated to suspend the campaign on his network's sites.

Yet the US 'old media press' for all its sanctimonious preaching about how its IT press is 'untouchable' is surprisingly tame. While money is not doled out directly, it seems that software and hardware companies have managed to tame the untouchables.

Fresh in my memory is the time I was asked to stop asking questions that "offended my Microsoft hosts" by one senior "people ready" US magazine editor.

More here. µ