This is a short diary, since I'm sort of multi-tasking here between work and the Oscars, but this story went up at Salon. Written by Lindsay Beyerstein, it's a consideration of whether or not high-profile bloggers should work for political campaigns directly. Follow me over the fold for a few brief questions.
Beyerstein states that she was offered Amanda's job first, but that she turned it down. Part of her concern was the independence of bloggers, and whether or not she could work keep her own blog independently:
I knew that if I was blogging for Edwards, anything I said on Majikthise would be a potential liability for the candidate, even if I wasn't talking about politics.
And aside from the risks to the campaign, I wasn't sure this arrangement would be healthy for my blog. With this responsibility weighing on my mind, how could I continue to deliver the independent perspective that my readers value? If I were suddenly on a candidate's payroll, yet still posting my own "independent" thoughts on Majikthise, what would my longtime readers think? Would they still trust me? Should they? Full disclosure wasn't going to solve the problem of divided loyalties.
Another snippet:
I tried to explain this as delicately and clearly as I could: A-list polemicists are popular because they say things you don't hear on television. The blogosphere isn't just "The Situation Room" with swear words, it's a space for writers to explore ideas that are outside the bounds of mainstream discourse.
If you hire these larger-than-life personalities to blog for John Edwards, they'll have to stop espousing many of the radical policy positions and unconventional values that made them popular in the first place.
This is an important point to me. To gain fame amid the din of the blogosphere, don't you need to have a radical point of view? Isn't that part of what makes blogging different from the MSM? That bloggers are unafraid to aggressively pursue the truth as opposed to courting the commercial and political establishments?
What do the folks here at dKos think? Should high-profile bloggers become the next breed of sought after campaign workers? Is there a conflict of interests in blogging and campaigning?