This Space For Rent?

There's a bit of a kerfuffle being raised by an op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday that says that because some bloggers got paid to work for political campaigns, the entire liberal blogosphere has been tainted and now it's no better than the ink-stained wretches of "real" journalism.

"The Netroots.” “People Power.” “Crashing the Gate.” The lingo of liberal Web bloggers bespeaks contempt for the political establishment. The same disdain is apparent among many bloggers on the right, who argued passionately for a change in the slate of House Republican leaders — and who wallowed in woe-is-the-party pity when the establishment ignored them.

You might think that with the kind of rhetoric bloggers regularly muster against politicians, they would never work for them. But you would be wrong.

Over the past few years, bloggers have won millions of fans by speaking truth to power — even the powers in their own parties — and presenting a fresh, outsider perspective. They are the pamphleteers of the 21st century, revolutionary “citizen journalists” motivated by personal idealism and an unwavering confidence that they can reform American politics.

But this year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research.

After the Virginia Democratic primary, for instance, James Webb hired two of the bloggers who had pushed to get him into the race. The Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut had at least four bloggers on his campaign team. Few of these bloggers shut down their “independent” sites after signing on with campaigns, and while most disclosed their campaign ties on their blogs, some — like Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits — did so only after being criticized by fellow bloggers.

The trend seems certain to continue in 2008. Potential presidential hopefuls like Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain already are paying big-name bloggers as consultants, and Julie Fanselow of Red State Rebels said on her blog she would entertain job offers from Howard Dean, Barack Obama, John Edwards or Al Gore.

Then there's a list of "some of the most influential bloggers" who were paid for their work and what they wrote about.

We're busted. We're all in cahoots to undermine the print media, and the job that I really have where I go every weekday and spend eight hours working for the kids of Miami-Dade County is just an elaborate cover so I can devote an hour or so in the early morning or late evening to blogging for some candidate. And those thirteen bloggers have ruined it for all of us.

That's bunk. The most cogent and insightful writing, both liberal and conservative, in the last campaign was on sites that had no connection, real or imagined, with a campaign or a party.

Frankly, I'd be really surprised if any candidate running would want to hook up with me; to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to work for a candidate that would hire a blog like this one. Besides, the bloggers that get hired to work for candidates are either political science wonks with a background in the field or they're insiders who blog because its considered the trendy thing to do. I am neither. I don't do politics; I just write about it.

(H/T to Echidne of the Snakes.)