Pitching PR to the Blogosphere

PR Firms to target bloggers?
Everyone and their uncle is covering the story of how pundit Armstrong Williams accepted $240,000 from the Bush administration to publicise 'No Child Left Behind' and then carelessly forgot to mention the payola when he professed to be independant and ethical. Even now, he won't be giving the cash back although he promised to be a good boy in future during an online chat about the controversy reported by the Washington Post yesterday.

Now the question has arisen: have any other pundits taken payola to push political agendas? Much of the attention is focused on rightwing bloggers because of the Williams scandal, following an article from Ketchum Inc., the company that acted as paymaster for the White House in the Williams case. The article on the Ketchum website exorts PR people to

"work directly with bloggers and encourage them to write about, for example, a particular product or service. Our goal: to persuade them to write about the key features we wish to highlight and begin a dialogue or discussion about it."

In this, they are simply following the advice of the Public Relations Society of America, who in an article entitled 'Pitching Blogs' advise their members that:

Publicists have long sought means for reaching highly targeted audiences, including media reps, in order to drive buzz about their clients. With the kind of traffic and targeting that any of the aforementioned sites generate, topic-specific blogs can fit the bill.

So, now the question is how to land your clients in the right blog at the right time in order to reap the benefits of their highly receptive audience.

What liberal media?
Ketchum also touts it's 'Professional Writers Group' as one of it's premier services, for "high-level projects including executive speeches, op-ed pieces, white papers, articles, Web sites and even books." The main figures in this group are:

Dennis Farney, an award-winning White House reporter and political writer.

Al Karr, a respected reporter and writer on transportation, labor and other manufacturing issues.

John Pierson, a former White House correspondent who also covered Congress, taxes and national political campaigns.

Ron Shafer, a book author, authority on political humor, and editor of the Wall Street Journal’s popular “Washington Wire” weekly column for nearly 20 years.

Aha! Democrats at last!
The major Washington lobbying arm of Ketchum is the 'Washington Group' which was aquired in 2001. It's three partners are John Raffaelli, John O'Hanlon and Rita Lewis.

Raffaelli, one of the founding partners, was Finance Committee Legislative Counsel for tax and trade to Senator Lloyd Bentsen for four years. John O'Hanlon, also a founding partner, was National Finance Director for the Gephardt in Congress Committee, and Deputy Manager of the Gephardt for President Committee. He is one of the key advisors to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rita Lewis has more than ten years experience working for Senator Tom Daschle and other Democratic members of the US Senate.

Looks like they have both sides covered. Just goes to show, money talks louder than principles in DC.

Take the Oath
However, since Ketchum are quite happy to work both sides of the street, lobbying for both Democrat and Republican alike, progressive blogs are as likely to be approached as conservative ones. Atrios links to an idea for an oath, which I actually think is a good idea. While I would be more than happy to be paid to write (fat chance), I would want to control what I wrote and would never take cash to plug a specific issue. So, without further ado...

I swear that I have never taken and will never take money -- neither directly nor indirectly -- from any political campaign or government agency -- whether federal, state, or local -- in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).