Imagine the blow-back if a respected media outlet hired a movie critic with a day job producing studio publicity.

How about a food writer whose primary paycheck comes as executive chef for a restaurant chain? Or a book reviewer who works for a major publishing house?

People would object faster than you could scream "Conflict of Interest!" How can you ask journalists, even those of genuine integrity and good will, to objectively cover the industries they rely on for their main income stream?

Yet this sort of ethical quandary gets overlooked constantly when it comes to wine journalism -- a fact that hit home twice last week.

One came on the phone with a wine-writer acquaintance. Since neither of us realized at the time that our conversation would be grist for this piece, I'll protect his privacy, though many of you would recognize the byline.

"I don't see myself as a journalist," he told me. "I see myself as a promoter."

At first, I was surprised. Sure, the person in question is paid to promote wineries. But he's also paid to write about them in various media.

Which begs the question: when readers see a magazine article or wine column with his name attached, how many stop to parse whether the author's role is one of "journalist" or "promoter"? Perhaps more relevant: how many other fields of journalism require the reader even to consider a question like that?

The week's second "Aha!" moment came via the high-profile web startup soon to replace my local newspaper. AnnArbor.com recently began to trickle out names of its "digital journalists" and bloggers on various subjects. Their wine writer came as an eye-opener: he's the head wine guy for a company that runs five restaurants in town, and more elsewhere.^*

I've never met Eric Arsenault. As a certified sommelier, he doubtless has the chops to write about wine. And I can understand his appeal to an operation like AnnArbor.com, looking to save money with unpaid or low-paid "citizen journalists". They get someone qualified to cover a specialized topic without having to shell out serious dollars.

But at what cost to their journalistic credibility?

His ethical standards may be impeccable. But the position he'll occupy -- highly-visible wine writer for a dominant local news outlet --  presents an insurmountable appearance of conflict with the interests and demands of his nicely-paid day job. Or, as retired Michigan journalist Jim Smith asked in his "Free from Editors" blog, "Will the writer slant columns to favor or benefit his own company and who at AnnArbor.com will monitor that?"

That question just scratches the surface; those who know their way around the Three-Tier Shnook System realize that potential conflicts run way deeper than blatant self-promotion.

What editor will notice if a writer drops favorable mentions for a few slow-moving distributor closeouts into the blog, and thereby gets first access to a highly-allocated, Parkerized wine from the same book -- soon to feature on his flagship restaurant's by-the-glass list?

How many editors at AnnArbor.com even understand what the last sentence means? How many folks in the biz could deny that similar sorts of quid pro quo happen every day?

It boils down to this: does a media outlet jeopardize its credibility by publishing writers whose ability to self-deal -- and the appearance of possible conflicts of interest -- will dog everything that appears under their bylines? Or where the reader has to head-scratch and wonder what a writer got in return for a story's positive slant on a wine or winery.

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*For the record, I write a monthly wine column for another Ann Arbor news outlet, The Ann Arbor Chronicle.