Sunday, January 16, 2005
Blogging for Dollars
Journalists think blogging makes everyone one of them, but not everyone wants to be a journalist. That's the lesson from a long-running discussion among prominent political bloggers that spilled into the pages of the Friday Wall Street Journal.
The Journal's lede: "Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political 'bloggers' as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide."
Chris Suellentrop: The "high-profile aide" is Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Dean. Teachout earlier this week blogged on the subject of "Financially Interested Blogging." She wrote, in part, "In this past election, at least a few prominent bloggers were paid as consultants by candidates and groups they regularly blogged about."
Teachout named two prominent bloggers in particular: Jerome Armstrong of myDD.com and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos. "On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean."
"We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients," Teachout wrote. "While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime."
"To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment—but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." In the past, Teachout has also fingered Matthew Gross for writing about Erskine Bowles while Gross was on the candidate's payroll.
Armstrong and Moulitsas have complained vociferously on their blogs about Teachout's post and about the Journal's story. If the two men were journalists, those disclosures would be woefully insufficient. But Armstrong and Moulitsas aren't journalists. Nor does having a blog make someone a journalist.
Journalists think blogging makes everyone one of them, but not everyone wants to be a journalist. That's the lesson from a long-running discussion among prominent political bloggers that spilled into the pages of the Friday Wall Street Journal.
The Journal's lede: "Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political 'bloggers' as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide."
Chris Suellentrop: The "high-profile aide" is Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Dean. Teachout earlier this week blogged on the subject of "Financially Interested Blogging." She wrote, in part, "In this past election, at least a few prominent bloggers were paid as consultants by candidates and groups they regularly blogged about."
Teachout named two prominent bloggers in particular: Jerome Armstrong of myDD.com and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos. "On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean."
"We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients," Teachout wrote. "While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime."
"To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment—but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." In the past, Teachout has also fingered Matthew Gross for writing about Erskine Bowles while Gross was on the candidate's payroll.
Armstrong and Moulitsas have complained vociferously on their blogs about Teachout's post and about the Journal's story. If the two men were journalists, those disclosures would be woefully insufficient. But Armstrong and Moulitsas aren't journalists. Nor does having a blog make someone a journalist.
