CJR Watch, Part III

Less and less impressed with CJR and its Campaign Desk. Campaign Desk’s Brian Montopoli accuses the WSJ of trying to “put lipstick on a pig” with its story disclosing the Dean campaign put two bloggers on its payroll to secure their allegiance. That MyDD’s Jerome Armstrong and Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas Zuniga were hired isn’t the news here, though — as the article said in its second paragraph, this “was noted in several publications at the time. “

Rather, the news is Zephyr Teachout’s allegation that the payments were made to buy their loyalty. “To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment,” she writes, “but it was very clearly, internally, our goal … Imagine Howard Dean hiring Maureen Dowd!”

The pair were paid twice the rate of other staffers with similar backgrounds, Teachout says.

I don’t think this is a scandal; it’s certainly not comparable to the Armstrong Williams payout; and the WSJ line about “shaken confidence” is probably overwrought. But a “non-story”? Something that doesn’t even belong in the newspaper? That’s even more of a stretch.

(The Journal’s story, incidentally, was on page B2 — which I think was about the right place for it.)

Teachout has some more thoughts on her blog, and there’s a big discussion on Slashdot — it inspired an awful lot of debate for a “non-story.”

Again, I’m not saying Armstrong or Zuniga did anything wrong … as Teachout says, right now it’s like the Wild Wild West; this is a new medium and the rules haven’t evolved yet. But how can they, unless papers report on situations like this?

(My previous blog-entries on CJR and Campaign Desk can be found here and here. I adapted this post from a letter I sent to Romenesko yesterday evening, but it doesn’t look like Jim is going to post it that was posted Saturday evening.)