With the requisite Sid Hartman exception, local news organizations don't let their journalists endorse products, even when moonlighting as radio or TV hosts.

That changed last month, when the PiPress columnist and KSTP host Joe Soucheray began touting Frattallone's Hardware and Toshiba flat-screen TVs on his "Garage Logic" show. The paid plugs were something the highly rated curmudgeon hadn’t done in his 29-year AM1500 career.

Although Soucheray did not return two requests for comment, KSTP program director Steve Konrad bluntly explained via Twitter, “Sales always wanted Joe do spots. We 'protected' him from that stench. Compromised with GL-friendly ads & long-term $$. Rece$ bedfellows.”

While it’s a pleasant surprise commercial radio would erect a wall between talent and ad dollars, the bigger shock is that a newspaper was willing to puncture the barrier.

Pioneer Press editor Thom Fladung says he didn’t change the paper’s policy because "we didn't have any 'policy' here, as far as I know."

Fladung says a few months ago, "Joe approached me about the ads when he was considering doing them. I told him I didn't see any problems with it as long as, of course, he then didn't write about the products he's endorsing in the Pioneer Press. Which he said he completely understood."

Things are different at the Strib, where managing editor Rene Sanchez says, “We don't let newsroom staffers endorse products. It's just something outside the journalist's creed. We're not supposed to favor anything. Except the facts.”

Basically, the idea is that journalists shouldn’t appear to be in anyone’s pocket. It’s OK to be paid directly by an organization (or organizations), but not by a specific business.

Of course, in the new-media world, thousands of independent journalists happily cash advertisers’ checks, and even hustle clients themselves. This blog just panhandled for 320 direct donors, and the Minneapolis Foundation sponsors Daily Glean. While the money goes into MinnPost’s general account, the donor-to-journalist route is far more direct here than anything traditional newspapers and TV stations now do.

And when I worked at KFAN and and for Konrad at KSTP in the mid-'90s, I did endorsements, though only as a full-time, non-moonlighting employee.

To keep playing devil’s advocate on ethics, did things really change when Soochie began pitching socket wrenches and TVs? After all, he’s a columnist, not a beat reporter, whose love for unfettered capitalism, manly gee-gaws and leisure consumption is well established in print and on air. Advertisers may not have put cash directly in his pocket, but surely he knows the major sponsors who’ve kept GL — and his bank account — afloat all these years.

In other words, Joe was already lot closer to Sid than, say, PiPress reporters Dave Orrick or Rachel Stassen-Berger.

Of course, viewing Sooch as a newspaper guy in a radio world is backward — something he acknowledged in the Winter 2009 issue of St. Thomas magazine:

Soucheray remembers a conversation with one of his Pioneer Press editors, Walker Lundy, who asked him, “Do you know how lucky you are to work at a paper that lets you do radio?”

“I fired back, ‘Do you know how lucky you are to have a guy who works at a radio station that lets him write for the paper?’ I guess that’s around the time it finally settled into my brain that I’m mostly a radio guy.”

KFAN host Dan Barreiro once did similar double-duty while a Strib sports columnist. "I was not allowed to do endorsements while at the Strib, and I was absolutely fine with that policy," he says.

Barreiro, who has one of the market’s highest-rated shows, says he didn’t quit the paper solely to cash in on spots. "The reason for leaving was more that it really was the right time, for all sorts of reasons. There is no question, though, that it opened the door to doing endorsements, and more money."

While it’s a near-certainty Sooch pockets extra dough on the deal, I tried in vain to confirm this. Konrad said he was “not comfortable” releasing specifics; Soucheray was incommunicado, and Fladung didn’t respond to a late e-mail for comment.

The PiPress editor will have to contend with the perception — at least among readers who care — that he’s lowered the ethical bar to accommodate a star. Would he be OK with a reporter endorsing products off her beat? Will Sooch be able to opine on Grand Avenue zoning knowing Frattallone’s has a store there? Can Best Buy be mentioned since it vends Toshiba sets? The slippery slope awaits.

As Konrad acknowledges, there's long been a "stench" factor here. However strong the smell in today's changed media world, it now also wafts over the PiPress newsroom.