Dan
Riehl, Melissa Clouthier and others already ripped that ridiculous Daily
Caller story to shreds yesterday, but I had a few comments of my own to add.
If you missed the story, it is titled, “True Stories of
Bloggers that Feed on Partisan Cash,” and here is the part that is most at
issue:
“It’s standard operating procedure”
to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative.
A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out
there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad
sales.”
On those two statements, I call bullshit. I don’t know who the anonymous “Republican
campaign operative” and “GOP blogger-for-hire” are but I’ve been blogging since
2004 and I know many, many bloggers. I
know some of them fairly well and I can confidently say there is no way that 50
percent of bloggers are getting paid (especially beyond ad sales) to blog. Maybe I move in different circles, but in the
world of conservative political blogging that I live in, that is not the case.
Here is what I can tell you about what I’ve seen of bloggers
since I started blogging in April of 2004.
I can tell you about bloggers who work all day at a job to pay their
bills and then come home and stay up to the wee hours to blog and get paid
nothing for it. I can tell you about
bloggers who pay out of their own funds for servers and blog design and to go
to events they want to cover. They often
go without other things, and sometimes anger their spouses by spending that
money, to be able to blog. I can tell
you about bloggers who would love to make enough money blogging to quit their
day jobs and devote all their time to their blogs, but have not found a way to
make it happen.
I think bloggers should be getting paid. Not by a candidate to say what they want them
to say without disclosing a relationship, but I do think they should be getting
paid for their work and I have been involved in discussions with other bloggers
about some ways that might come about.
I have at times made money blogging by getting a percentage
of ad revenue, but since I was part of a group blog most of the time I rarely
paid any attention to what ads were even running and it never influenced my
blogging. I have been paid by several publications
over the years to write columns. I have
been paid by a couple of candidates to work on their campaigns over the past
few years, but I rarely blog during the same time I am working on a campaign
(mainly because I don’t have enough time) and when I do I go out of my way to
disclose my association with the candidate and campaign, like I did this week.
Read Melissa Clothier’s post on the Daily Caller piece at Liberty
Pundits. She says much of what I
would have said if I had not already read her saying it better. I worked on the same RNC project that Melissa
cites (we actually became good friends while working together on it) and am on
the same tech listserv she mentions. We
did not get paid for it, but were happy to do it to give the RNC better insight
into the blogging community.
I am not going to defend Dan Riehl point by point since he
has already defended himself better than I ever could, but will say that anyone
who knows Dan has to know he says what he wants to say. And does so forcefully (and sometimes quite
crudely).
I’ve never taken money, in the form of blog ads or
otherwise, to blog about a campaign or issue.
I have been asked by people working for campaigns to blog about certain
stories and have done it free of charge because they are things I would have
blogged about anyway. As a consultant to
campaigns I have asked bloggers to write about the candidates I’ve worked
for. I have asked frequently, in fact. And I will continue to ask and to attempt to
persuade them with my arguments for the candidate, rather than cash.
When the news about Tucker Carlson’s blog project came out I
was surprised because I’d never heard his name associated with blogging. Maybe he thinks over half of us are getting
paid to say what others want us to say.
Maybe if he knew a few more bloggers he, or Jonathan Strong who wrote
the piece, could have asked a few of them and found out whether or not 50
percent were getting paid to blog. I
read at Dan
Riehl’s blog that Strong graduated from college in 2006 and has worked as a
congressional staffer and lives in Arlington.
Maybe he doesn’t know that most bloggers don’t live in the DC area. Or even in California. I’d be glad to introduce him to a few dozen
who won’t make a dime.
I don’t doubt that there are bloggers who have sold their credibility
for money from rich candidates who are too stupid to realize that if they are
worth electing there are people who will write about them for free. I don’t doubt that there are consultants who
are evil and crooked as well. But the
majority of bloggers are not getting rich, and are not selling their
reputations to the highest bidder. The
fact that Daily Caller would publish such accusations with what appears to be little
investigation or corroboration, tells me more about their credibility than that
of the vast majority of conservative bloggers.
There was another story in the same news cycle yesterday about
Philly requiring bloggers to purchase a $300 business permit. For most bloggers, including most
conservative bloggers, that would not only wipe out any money they made
blogging, but would put them in negative territory. Bottom line is if you want to get rich
blogging, you’d do better to follow the Tucker Carlson model than the Dan Riehl
one.
Update: When I wrote about hearing about Tucker Carlson's blog project, I was referring to back before the Daily Caller was launched, when I first heard anything about the project. Before that when I heard Tucker Carlson's name I thought of MSNBC, not blogging. And the Daily Caller isn't a blog -- it is an online magazine -- although Jim Treacher is there and he is a great blogger. Some other good bloggers write for DC, too. It's just too bad they weren't assigned to this story.
Crossposted at Wizbangblog.com.
