Mark Penn, fresh after his brilliant performance in the Clinton campaign had an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal about bloggers.
At the beginning of the article, Penn made some observations that just didn’t smell right to this blogger.
Penn wrote:
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income.
I wondered about those studies but the Journal was nice enough to link to them on-line. So I clicked on them and here is what I found out what the studies actually reported
http://www.blogworldexpo.com/general-information/important-statistics
1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
I’m sorry to have to explain this to Penn, who is the CEO of an international corporation, but bloggers saying they want to make money is not the same as them actually profiting from their work!
Technorati has indexed 133 million blogs since 2002, but only 7.4 million of those blogs have been updated in the last 120 days. Despite this sprawling network of writers, only two percent of surveyed bloggers called their blog a "primary source of income."
Once again, I hate to break the news to Penn but 2 percent of surveyed bloggers saying that blogging is A primary source of their income is not the same as 425,000 using blogs as THE primary source of income.
Judging by this diligent research displayed by Penn, I now believe this story from last year:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/report_mark_penn_thought_dem_p.php
With the Clinton campaign widely viewed as being on its last legs, staffers are now more free than ever to dish out some dirt on the many strategic blunders of Mark Penn.
The latest: At a strategy session last year, Penn reportedly said that a Clinton win in California would effectively wrap up the nomination by awarding her all of the state's 370 delegates.
As we all know, Democrats don't do winner-take-all primaries, but instead use a form of proportional representation that has been in force for about 20 years — a fact that didn't seem to sink in with the Clinton campaign and their big-state strategy.