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Junket City

Jan 26th, 2006 at 11:08 pm by Susie

I’m curious. Can I possibly be the only liberal blogger who sees something wrong with this?

UPDATE: Mediagirl has more.

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18 Responses to “Junket City”

on 26 Jan 2006 at 11:14 pm1will

Uh, no.
on 26 Jan 2006 at 11:19 pm2Matt

That shit is fucked up.
on 26 Jan 2006 at 11:22 pm3james richardson

I read about that earlier, somewhere, on some blog. The irony is I was high when I read it.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 12:00 am4larkspur

Susie, it should be clear to you by now that I am so not a member of the blognoscenti, and I lack cluefulness about bloggish backstory, and I don’t mind looking like a dweeb for asking, so….

Is that linked piece really truly attempting to equate the upcoming Amsterdam event with the Armstrong Williams/Maggie Gallagher, et al., clandestine cash-for-columns deal? That none of us was ever to supposed to find out about? And that involved the collusion of (and/or the instigation by)our (and their) own government?

Good night nurse, that’s just awesomely stupid. Sometimes this shit starts to make Rose Mary Woods look almost admirable, you know? That wretched loyal woman allowed herself to be videotaped trying recreate the pretzel-contortions she’d have had to perform in order to have “inadvertantly” made Nixon’s incredible 18 minute gap.

So: am I reading this right, i.e. the way you are?
on 27 Jan 2006 at 12:04 am5Susie

Nope. My point is, this is just the first step down the same road and bloggers aren’t immune. Many of today’s Republican scumbags started out as (don’t laugh) reformers.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 12:12 am6Lis Riba

media girl wrote something similar.

I’ll confess, personally I’d love an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe. I suspect this will be a great deal for BlogAds, because this might encourage other bloggers to sign up with their service in the hopes that they’ll be picked for the next giveaway.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 12:25 am7larkspur

Okay. OMG, I’m glad I asked. So despite the upfront “transparency” of the why and how of the Amsterdam junket itself, we go down this road at our peril, since while it may be paved with good intentions it could lead to hell. So good people who participate do so at a risk? Is there any way they can participate, but set limits on perks, or otherwise protect their integrity?
on 27 Jan 2006 at 3:11 am8Mithras

Susie-
Would you be okay if the government of Holland had purchased the ads with cash equal to the value of the trips? (I assume that would be pretty hefty, but not outrageous, for a month’s worth of premium space on heavy-hitting blogs.)
on 27 Jan 2006 at 3:34 am9reason

Well I’m not sure what ethical standards bloggers have to meet. It certainly is not as high as public officials, or even mainstream press I wouldn’t think. And it makes a difference if they are up front about it or hide it (if and when tit comes for tat). Are you sure you aren’t a little jealous Susie?
on 27 Jan 2006 at 3:55 am10David Parsons

Isn’t this a copycat of the advertising campaign that the man who publishes gapingvoid did for the stormhoek winery (except that he didn’t demand any sort of feedback)? It’s probably cheaper than the usual one-page insert you’d find in a travel magazine, and it can’t be much worse for focussing.

It does take the wind out of the Bold! New! Revolutionary! Weblog! World! when a marketing group can use a traditional marketing scheme to sweep up (some of the) A-listers, with the not-unreasonable expectation that they’ll cheerfully chatter on about it when they return to Imperial America.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 5:22 am11Melanie

Yup, this is the first step down the Abramoff road, althought the interview I did yesterday made it not at all clear about when the DOJ gets involved or why or when. I wish Ezra, Jeralyn and Co. a good time.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 6:59 am12der

**”No one who makes the trip is compelled to write one word, good or bad, about Amsterdam, and maybe some bloggers will return home and say nasty things about the place. But somehow I doubt they will.”

Posted by dglover

**

IMO disclosure is everything. I don’t care who the govement of Amsterdam treats to some conference and invites those who attend to tell of their experience, after all it isn’t my tax money, I don’t live or vote there. But if it is my government whether Bush of Clinton, I want to know how my money is spent. The national budget every year going back to Clinton’s welfare reform and still further, has screwed over those in need and with less resources and ways to take care of themself. All the code words and arguments against helping the “lazy” poor help to keep the majority supporting social cuts and supporting giving more to the military, Pentagon waste is well documented, US military budget vs Amstedams and the rest of the worlds military spending is well known that we outspend them all combined. But we keep giving our tax money to the governnment, this administration and all the ones before, to waste on weapons of destruction and misery and fail to see the irony.

Naah - disclosure. If Susie takes a trip on Canada’s dime and writes good things about Canada encouraging her readers to go there I’d like to know her point of view and the perks she might have gotten to come to it. The relationship to the Abramoff situation is apples and oranges. If someone wants to send me on a free trip that relates to what I do I’m going - money’s tight enough as it is.

Too much freebie stuff does go on but that’s marketing isn’t it? And what’s it all about Alfie?
on 27 Jan 2006 at 8:42 am13Michael Rogers

Welcome to reality.

When Jeralyn of TalkLeft sells out like this, it makes me wonder if there’s anything left. Used to have soooooooo much respect for that site.

Some of the folks on this trip are same folks who scammed us with BlogPac. As we now know, the PAC was pretty much created as an enhancement to the Armstrong/Zuniga/Bowers group. And, while the idea gets a 10 out of 10 for brilliance — the transparency and honesty of BlogPac is struggling to hit 1 out of 10. I wonder if there is any connection between the ethically questionable trip and the ethically challenged Bloggers Political Action Committee..

The smartest move, of course, was the way that the sponsors took control of a piece of the bloggers’ EDITORIAL real estate. Not only do they get an ad (something that does not bother me) but the attendess MUST place the logo of the trip sponsor’s blog on their site for an ENTIRE YEAR! WOW… At least we know the price to buy editorial content on supposedly independent blogs.

As the blogging world struggles to find it’s proper place and modes of operation, some are bound to be upset by in how the web’s economics develop. Ethics, however, are ethics, and I can’t help but think that Talk Left’s acquiescence to sponsors of a trip — and other such programs, like Media Matters’ blogger/political payola — are just more examples of how the progressive community is often ethically challenged and why the left is frustrated with the left.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 2:01 pm14Elayne Riggs

I think it’s all part and parcel of the blog-begging thing. So many bloggers have this sense of entitlement that they deserve to make money off their hobby, so they’ll sign onto BlogAds or put up PayPal buttons and this is the sort of thing that naturally results. I’ve been sent a few freebies since I started blogging, a couple of books and a DVD as I recall, and I’ve reviewed them in exchange (not all positively), and that was the total quid pro quo. But I never solicited them, the way bloggers do when they/you sign up for BlogAds.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 2:32 pm15PhilW

Nice to know how many bloggers are willing to sell out. I’ll be setting up my slush fund, ooops I meant lobbying firm, as soon as the Dems get a few more seats in congress.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 4:02 pm16David (Austin Tx)

I have a real problem with this.

Lefty bloggers who have been railing against the undue influence of money, and favors in Washington, shouldn’t be taking advantage of this sort of thing.

It gives the appearance of selling out. I will probably never be in a position to accept such an offer, however, I am pretty confident, that were such an offer sent my way, couched in the same terms, I would turn it down, though it would be tough.

It just appears to be a pay for play type scenario.

Maybe it is just a bit of jealousy on my part, because very few read my blog, or whatever. But is just seems too much like what we have been railing against Abramoff/DeLay/Ney/Dukestir for.
on 27 Jan 2006 at 5:21 pm17Matt

In Media Girl’s comments, marisacat reminds us of Billmon’s 2004 LA Times piece (pdf link) on bloggers selling out, which seems germane to this conversation:

Even as it collectively achieves celebrity status for its anti-establishment views, blogging is already being domesticated by its success. What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.

In the process, a charmed circle of bloggers — those glib enough and ideologically safe enough to fit within the conventional media punditocracy — is gaining larger audiences and greater influence. But the passion and energy that made blogging such a potent alternative to the corporate-owned media are in danger of being lost, or driven back to the outer fringes of the Internet.

There’s ample precedent for this. America has always had a knack for absorbing, and taming, its cultural revolutionaries. The rise and long, sad fall of rock ‘n’ roll is probably the most egregious example, while the music industry’s colonization of rap is a more recent one.

When I say blogging is headed for a kind of commercialized senility, I’m talking primarily about political blogs — those that have, or claim to have, something to say about government, economics, foreign policy, etc. Not surprisingly, these are the blogs most likely to show up on the media’s radar screen.

…

To be sure, there are still plenty of bloggers out there putting the 1st Amendment through its paces, their only compensation the satisfaction of speaking the truth to power. But it’s going to become more difficult for those voices to reach a broad audience. If the mainstream media are true to past form, they will treat the A-list blogs — commercialized, domesticated — as if they are the entire blogosphere, while studiously ignoring the more eccentric, subversive currents swirling deeper down.Not the most glorious ending for a would-be revolution, but also not a surprising one. Bloggers aren’t the first, and won’t be the last, rebellious critics to try to storm the castle, only to be invited to come inside and make themselves at home.
on 29 Jan 2006 at 5:11 am18Cedwyn

the bloggers aren’t being paid for editorial comment - the trip is payment for blogad space. is bartering illegal now?

in any event, it’s amsterdam’s tourism board, not shrubCo - there actually are good things to say about it, no payoff necessary!

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