NYT columnist’s relationship with PR pro under scrutiny

Is it a conflict of interest for a journalists and a public relations practitioner to have a romantic relationship?

Newsweek tech editor Dan Lyons—the man who blew the Whisper-Gate story wide open—reported Friday that “Pogue has been dating Nicki Dugan, a vice president at OutCast Agency, a San Francisco PR firm that represents top tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Cisco, Netflix, and Yahoo, since last year.”

Pogue has written articles about OutCast clients and its competitors without publicly disclosing his relationship to Dugan, Lyons said, citing several examples in his story. However, Pogue did not write about Dugan’s own clients.

According to Lyons’ report, Pogue’s editor at the Times, Damon Darlin, said Pogue told him about the relationship last December:

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