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October 04, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Minnesota: The Land Of 10,000 Blog Scandals?
Sometimes it doesn't pay for bloggers to be paid by campaigns -- or to work for free. In fact, bloggers and campaigns alike are learning this year that maybe they weren't meant for each other. That is especially true in Minnesota, which has been the breeding ground for blog scandal after blog scandal since mid-summer.
The first controversy involved the campaign of Democrat Coleen Rowley, who is challenging Republican Rep. John Kline. Kline's campaign accused Rowley of using a blogger as a "double agent" to gather inside information about the Kline campaign. David Bailey, the blogger and campaign volunteer in question, denied the charge and defended himself at the Rowley campaign's blog.
A second blog-related scandal hit the campaign of Democratic Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar. In that instance, a blogger not connected with the campaign appears to have illegally accessed an unreleased advertisement by Klobuchar's GOP foe, Rep. Mark Kennedy, and sent it to Klobuchar spokeswoman Tara McGuiness. She was fired for having looked at the television ad.
Now the Gopher State is in the midst of another blog brouhaha, this time over a Republican blogger who is being paid by two campaigns and Democratic bloggers who have received "new journalist" fellowships from an outfit called the Center for Independent Media.
The Republican blogger is Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed. He previously disclosed that Kennedy's campaign pays him, but until the Democratic blog MN Publius reported it last week, Brodkorb had not mentioned that GOP House candidate Michelle Bachmann also paid him $5,500 in August for opposition research and press consulting.
Other Democratic blogs, including City Pages, Minnesota Monitor and Minnesota Republican Watch, picked up the news.
Brodkorb, a former GOP operative in Minnesota, responded in part by reporting that the media center "is spending at least $31,500 (seven paid bloggers x $4,500) to pay liberal bloggers in Minnesota."
"After this post," he wrote, "we'll see who in the liberal blogosphere is actually interested in disclosure and whose using disclosure as a way to attack the messenger because they can't attack the message."
At least one of the bloggers in question, Matt Martin of MN Publius, answered when Brodkorb called him out. And City Pages acknowledged that "Brodkorb's greater point, that more than a few in the liberal media are themselves paid to blog, bears greater disclosure."
At this rate, there is plenty of time for more blog scandals to surface in Minnesota during the last five weeks of the campaign. And I imagine that others are brewing across the country. Shoot an e-mail to dglover@nationaljournal.com if you know of any.
Posted by Danny | 04:58 PM
