On "Blogging for Dollars"

For my money, Slate.com is one of the best sites on the Web. Their recent purchase from Microsoft by The Washington Post had me a little worried, but so far, so good. The editorial voice seems largely intact.

This week, Slate ran the article "Blogging for Dollars," which criticized political blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of DailyKos.com for taking money from political clients without disclosing their names (he also took money from the Dean campaign, but he disclosed that one).

Jen wrote an e-mail to Chris Suellentrop , the author of the article, letting him know that she thinks the point of Daily Kos isn't to get talking points from Kos, but to participate in the discourse. In other words, Daily Kos isn't some normal everyday blog, like, say, this one, which yields approximately zero dollars for its author:

The thousands of people who participated in discussions and political debate and idea sharing on dKos (some of whom still do) were NOT paid, and were free at any time to disagree with or debunk anything that anyone, including Kos...asserted as true or important. And, many of them did...some readers of your article unfamiliar with its format may not know that

She has a good point. The article should have pointed out for readers who haven't seen the site that it doesn't represent an environment where someone issues forth directives for all to follow. It's more like a cacaphony of ideas fighting for attention.

 More surprising, though, was that Suellentrop actually wrote back, and promptly:

That's true, but the piece was about Moulitsas himself, and his decision not to disclose the political clients that paid him during the past election cycle.

Well yeah, but a little bit of context goes a long way. Still, I'm impressed that he took the time to write back.