It’s no secret that I'm not a big fan of “analyst” Rob Enderle, but to me, this takes the cake. In his latest “column” on TechNewsWorld, among discussions of Steve Jobs’s health, Enderle also talks up Dell’s plans to launch a digital music player and download service, which we discussed last week—and, as you might remember, a project that Enderle himself is a consultant on.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Enderle’s piece:

The Wall Street Journal got wind of a secret project at Dell to possibly take the music lead away from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), but not necessarily the device lead, making it kind of interesting.
[…]
What Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) believes, and I agree, is that folks don’t want to spend lots of time managing music — they just want to listen to it. The fact that few refresh the music on their iPods is a clear indicator that there is untapped potential here, even with iPod owners.
[…]
It has to provide more choices among better services — while containing complexity and creating a great user experience — to be successful. It can be done; we’ll know in a few months whether Dell can do it. I’m not sure I’d bet against Michael Dell.

Yet, nowhere in the article does Enderle mention that he has been hired by Dell to consult on the project. Classy. Or—to put it another way—of questionable ethics.

Is Enderle bound by journalistic ethics? Technically, he’s an analyst, not a journalist, but given that he’s writing a column on a site where it will be disseminated alongside news content, it seems at the very least awkward that he not mention his involvement in this project.

Just another tickmark in the questions column for: why the heck would anybody hire this guy?