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Thoughts of Yelp come to mind. Businesses paying to protect their reputations. Except we extend this even further.

He envisions "a review site that reviews the review sites".

It appears that's what his employer is doing with his column. He's reviewing a review site. And as he says, the goal is getting page views. Mission accomplished.

What does he think he's going to do with financing?

Implement a massive marketing and sales campaign, getting review sites to sign up to protect their reputations?

If he wants to review review sites, nothing is stopping him from starting a blog and doing so.

You can write or get users to write absolute rubbish and still get page views. That seems to be a solid way to attract eyeballs. It continues to work, year after year.