How much should you trust the veracity of what you read? If it’s about tips on motherhood, parenting and products, well, you’ll need to apply a little more scrutiny than perhaps you thought. That’s the dirty little secret about Mommy bloggers that Newsweek highlights in its recent issue.

Once a community simply looking to share advice, concerns and ideas, mommy bloggers are increasingly courted by companies to, essentially, serve as concierges to the 18 million U.S. women who turn to blogs for advice or recommendations. They’re lavished with everything from baby food and diaper bags to cars and vacations in hopes that positive reviews (and they generally are) will reach the segment that makes most decisions in the household.

That these bloggers, who number in the thousands, are trying to commoditize this popularity isn’t a problem. Hardly. It’s sound business, taking advantage of an opportunity. That there are no acceptable standards of transparency is a different story. It’s begun to raise serious questions of authenticity, which eventually reflect on what we do.

As PR practitioners, these Mommy bloggers can play an important role in utilizing new media to reach consumers. We should, however, strive for the same transparency that we would elsewhere. Otherwise, their vanished credibility eventually will eliminate another avenue to tell our stories.