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October 08, 2007BELTWAY BLOGROLL
MySpace Buys Space For Political Bloggers
When MySpace and MTV hosted an interactive debate with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Sept. 27, six bloggers were there on the MySpace dime.
The social-networking site paid the travel expenses of five liberal bloggers: John Aravosis of Americablog, Chris Bowers of Open Left, Georgia Logothetis of Daily Kos, politics editor Jen Moseley of Feministing, and Jonathan Singer of MyDD. One conservative blogger, Jim Geraghty of National Review Online's The Campaign Spot, also agreed to take the trip.
"It's a plane ticket and a hotel room" and "a couple meals," said Mike Krempasky, a co-founder of the conservative blog RedState who now works at Edelman, a public relations firm that represents MySpace. He would not provide an overall tab for MySpace or specific numbers on the costs incurred by each blogger. That information also was not available on the blogs.
The participating bloggers were not required to write about the event, but Krempasky said MySpace insisted that they disclose the arrangement if they did blog. "It's in MySpace's interest to make sure folks see this as transparent," he said, adding that "I don't see anything nefarious about it as long as people are talking about it."
Krempasky said the deal between the bloggers and MySpace was not on par with the luxurious junket that 25 bloggers took to Amsterdam in February 2006 courtesy of the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions and the advertising firm Blogads.
Getting blog coverage of events poses a "great dilemma" for the PR world, Krempasky said. On the one hand, firms believe that bloggers with niche audiences are of value and their voices matter. On the other hand, few bloggers have the budgets of big media for traveling to events.
Although MySpace did not require the bloggers to write about the presidential debate, it wanted to give bloggers the opportunity for live coverage. "You want to make as much access available as possible," Krempasky said.
An unknown number of bloggers declined invitations from MySpace. Krempasky would not name them or their reasons for doing so, but he noted that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich launched his American Solutions venture the same day as the debate, and some bloggers attended it.
The three bloggers who attended the Gingrich event -- Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation, Matt Lewis of Townhall.com and Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters -- paid their own way, according to Bluey. Bluey also said via e-mail that Heritage did not pay the travel expenses of Morrissey and other bloggers this week when they came to Washington for Heritage's dinner with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
In the case of the MySpace debate, Krempasky defended the company's coverage of the bloggers' expenses by noting that invitations were extended across the political spectrum. He added that National Review Online's Geraghty could not be expected to say nice things about Edwards.
But why would MySpace care whether Edwards got good press or bad? The Web firm only cares about its own press -- and their bloggers gave them plenty of love.
MySpace bought goodwill from Geraghty. A former colleague of mine at the now-defunct VoxCap.com, he thanked "the good people at MySpace" in a post that jokingly downplayed any ethical concerns about him taking money from a company whose event he was covering. "If you see me posting 'MySpace is the greatest ... MySpace is the greatest.' in the coming days," he wrote, "then it represents my unvarnished opinion, or they have placed some sort of subliminal message device in my hotel room."
Daily Kos' Logothetis, meanwhile, heaped praise on MySpace for its "innovative" and "fascinating" debate format. "Simply put, it's like live-blogging in the candidate's face. Now that sounds like fun." Logothetis said she would have written about the debate regardless of whether MySpace paid her way to New Hampshire. It was a bit odd, then, that she didn't actually live-blog the debate and hasn't written anything about it since.
Geraghty, Americablog's Aravosis and MyDD's Singer actually did cover the debate on their blogs. Aravosis and Geraghty only disclosed MySpace's payment of their travel expenses in their initial posts. Singer mentioned the arrangement in all related posts, sometimes prominently.
Bowers and Moseley also disclosed the arrangement to their readers, though they did so with snarky tones.
"I have been told that I must legally disclose that MySpace is paying for my travel expenses to be here," Bowers wrote at Open Left. "So, well, MySpace is paying for my travel expenses to be here." Moseley added that "it's kind of funny to think that Rupert Murdoch [whose News Corp. owns MySpace] bought me a plane ticket. I should have some gay sex and get an abortion while I'm here."
Feministing's Moseley and Aravosis were the only MySpace-funded bloggers who actually bit the hand that fed them. "In theory, it was a great idea," Moseley said after the debate. "Get a candidate to have a conversation with actual young people, and let other young people submit questions and their reactions online, all at once. ... The problem was, as one of the other bloggers who attended mentioned, that the event really felt like the same old boring town-hall meeting candidates have been doing forever."
Aravosis may have been that blogger. "It's a neat idea," he said of the debate, "but it still feels like a regular old town meeting, with the occasional interjection of the updated polls or an [instant-messaging] question from a viewer."
But both of them ended their posts with praise for MySpace: Moseley said: "[L]et me tell you what I liked. The fact that they're trying. ... [O]verall it was fun. Got to meet some nice poeple, and I think this format has promise, it just needs some development."
And Aravosis complimented MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. "Very interesting guy," Aravosis said. "He was really interested in the blogs, how we function, etc., and had some good advice for how we can move forward as businesses (and we are businesses, news and advocacy businesses)."
So all in all, MySpace got its money's worth. It's no wonder that Krempasky said the company plans to invite bloggers to all 11 of the other scheduled MySpace/MTV debates.
UPDATE: Attempts to curry favor with bloggers are not limited to the political realm. The Wall Street Journal reports today that a four-star restaurant in Chicago has been winning rave reviews -- from bloggers who were chosen to dine there for free.
"As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups," the newspaper said. "Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes."
Posted by Danny | 12:59 PM
