Two interesting blog-related items in today’s Globe. First, an article about paid political consultants masquerading as regular folks. The article details a recent incident in which a paid shill tried to drum up some grassroots energy for John McCain on Redstate.com. It’s a significant problem to which, unfortunately, I don’t know of a good solution, unless the astroturfers are stupid enough to post from their campaign or PR office’s headquarters or some other easily identifiable IP address.
Second, Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy is apparently raising some significant hackles in Boston’s generally tight-lipped hospital community by blogging about stuff that, well, other hospitals would prefer to keep from the public. I confess I haven’t been a regular at Levy’s blog, but posts like this one make me think that I should change that. I’m going to add his RSS feed to our Google reader, since it looks like he’s causing quite a stir over there.
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2. Levy’s “Running a Hospital” blog is excellent. Just outstanding. And his intent is right-on: transparency.
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However, Mass General’s dude has a point: it’s important to get valid numbers. Once you put numbers out there, then there are winners and losers. Why should a winner worry too much about making the measurements more precise over time?
Redsate.com is itself an “astroturf” site. This fact apparently went over the head of the Globe reporter. Among the original founders if redsate is a political consultant, a VP at PR giant Edelman and a former Bush political appointee.
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Even better, these guys sold the site to Eagle Publishing (note the fine print at the bottom of every redstate page) whose flagship holding is Regnery Publishing. Regnery has published a long list of right-wing drool. It is presently pushing a global warming denial book on their front page and their list of right-wing warriors include Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, Steve Forbes, Bernard Goldberg, JD Hayworth, David Horowitz, Laura Ingraham and I’m only at the 9th letter of the alphabet.
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The real story the Globe missed with regards to astroturfing vs grassroots on the net, is the fact that many (and I can not think of an exception) of the national conservative blogs are astroturf sites like redstate or part of a brand extension of a rightwing pundit (Malkin or Hewitt come to mind). While the lefty sites are run by true grassroots activists. Sure the Markos and Armstrong’s of the world have grown into consultants and pundits, but that is not how they started.
Even clever and smart astroturfers, after a while, get caught. Why? Because they become ovbious in their constant shilling for a candidate.
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It seems to me that the whole concept of blogging, ie “the cream rises to the top” meritocracy-style (you are only as good as your last post; readers will only read you so long as they trust you) writing makes it hard to astroturf in the long run.
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Sure, for a little while, you might fool people, but eventually, readers see you coming from a mile away.
Don’t generalize, please, Frank. Not all large right-of-center blogs are simply PR company outlets. That generalization is obviously not true of AndrewSullivan, Lucianne, or Instapundit, just to give 3 examples.
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There were actually 3 blog stories in today’s Globe, not 2. The third was Ellen Goodman’s column that quoted the terms used by the Edwards ex-bloggers. The front page Globe story described these terms, but apparently would not put them in print. See here. This shows the value of many voices, IMHO. Blogs included.
Redstate and most rightwing blogs are astroturf sites. Instapundit to me is the only bonafide “grassroots” blog among the three you mentioned. Lucianne is nothing but an extension of her son and the National Review (maybe not legally, but certainly in spirit). Besides her fame was long established before her blogging. And Sullivan was already a media “brand” and the blog is just another way of him touting himself as a pundit. And to call Sullivan “conserative” is fighting words to most rightwingers.
to the hapless reporter.
Or is it more correct to say that the rightwing sites have institutional support from commercial institutions?
…I don’t know if it is the original AstroTurf site, but it was certainly one of the early ones. It’s run by the Republican operative James Glassman who wrote the infamous Dow 36000 book a few years ago. After it became clear that the Dow wasn’t going to reach 36000 any time soon, Glassman re-invented himself as a public relations firm and started TechCentralStation as an arm of the firm. Whenever I read an article from TCS, I wonder which of his corporate clients it was written for.
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BTW, it is funny that David Horowitz, in the 1960s, was a far lefty–when it was profitable to be far lefty. In the mid-1970s, when it was clear that it was no longer profitable to be far lefty and that far righty was more profitable, he suddenly shifted to the far right. Don’t believe a word the man says or writes. He’s only interested in being profitable for himself.
If ‘all’ red blogs are not real, like the cool and purehearted blue sites, explain to me George Soros’ enormous investment in MoveOn.org. To me, Lucianne and Kos are two scorpions in a bottle.
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Ever visited Republican Operative? Or other like forum sites? The Wide Awakes? Cold Hearted Truth? QandO? Blue State Conservatives? GOP Bloggers? In reality, you don’t get out much – not much wandering from comfortable truths.
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Locally, on the BMG blogroll we have sites like Mass GOP News and….wait for it….RedMassGroup.com.