The Left Does It Right

An aide - who writes Zonkette - from Howard Dean's web-heavy campaign revealed this week that they had paid two bloggers - MyDD and DailyKos - to work for the Dean campaign. They did "technical consulting"; as A-listers on the top of the blogging foodchain, their expertise in how to use the blogosphere was invaluable. The Dean aide admitted that the idea was not just to get technical help; they hoped these influential liberals would stay on their side during the primaries.

Unlike in the Armstrong Williams case, however, the lefties in question were ethically above-board. The Wall Street Journal (hardly a left-wing rag) reports that MyDD actually ceased posting for the contract period, and DailyKos posted a prominent notice of his employment.

By being clear with their readership about what their biases are, bloggers keep credibility as opinion writers. The mainstream media (MSM) often mistakes blogs as being analogous to them, but this is not the case. Blogs can never replace news syndicates as reporters. It can, however, be a better way of finding better-informed, more varied opinion than the MSM.

Hat tip to Drudge; note DailyKos' and MyDD's own perspectives, and Zonkette's post that began the brouhaha.