The Aged P

…just toasting and ruminating….

The Curious Case Of The Journolist Dogs That Didn’t Bark….

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post berated The Daily Caller for implying that Journolist might have been a left wing platform for message coordination. Nonsense says he – founder Ezra Klein emphasised to members that it was a discussion list and any idea about message coordination was just not kosher.

No doubt that is what Klein said and there is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he said it.

But Klein also said that he felt that the list should only contain journalists, not political operatives and he took great pains to exclude such people though “it’s possible I missed one”

The Daily Caller made a discovery…

In fact, he did. Jeff Hauser wrote scores of posts on Journolist during the time he was managing the New Jersey congressional campaign of Democrat Dennis Shulman. Hauser didn’t do much to hide his affiliation. Indeed, his posts on Journolist were signed, “Campaign Manager, Shulman for Congress,” followed by the campaign’s web address. After the election, Hauser took positions at a 527 group and a political action committee. He never left Journolist.

One of his posts arrived just before a McCain/Obama debate

The single biggest thing journolist can do is to lay the analytical framework within the media elite necessary for an actual Obama debate win to be viewed as such by a sufficient proportion of media elites that voters know it was a win.
Of course, this only works if Obama does as we expect (and McCain is a terrible debater, btw).
………
Journolist’s greatest challenge is to make sure an actual win by Obama translates into winning the battle for political impact.

Fairly explicit, wouldn’t you say? Yet The Caller discovered that no journolist questioned the nature of that post – not even Greg Sargent.

In the conversation that followed Hauser’s post, not one Journolister expressed surprise or disapproval. No one rebuked Hauser for telling journalists how to carry water for a politician. Despite the group’s supposedly “very strict” ban on political operatives and explicit partisan coordination, Hauser remained a member of Journolist for almost two more years.

Not a single dog barked.

Time to call in Sherlock Holmes – or Ed Morrisey?

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