I don't like Mark Penn. Neither do a lot of other people, especially Hillary Clinton supporters. Penn, if you don't recall, was Hillary's "Chief Strategist" during the 2008 campaign, and was responsible for pursuing a strategy that was fundamentally flawed, and could've in fact cost her the nomination. This, it should be noted, is not a gray area, or post-election Monday-morning quarterbacking. Mark Penn's caucus/primary strategy was predicated on states' convention votes being winner-take-all (like the electoral college), rather than proportionally divided. (I.e., if Obama gets 60% of a state's primary vote, and Clinton gets 40%, then Obama would get approximately 60% of the delegation's votes at the convention, and Clinton would get approximately 40%.) This is not arcane knowledge.
So I don't like Mark Penn. But he's done well for himself, landing a column in the Wall Street Journal, based on his book, Microtrends. And, he's still got his gig as a muckety-muck at one of the largest PR firms in the world.
And this is what happens when those two worlds collide in spectacular fashion. Let's refer to Gawker.com, shall we?
Mark Penn's latest (old, and none too insightful) 'Microtrend' column is about "glamping"—glamorous camping. It ran last weekend. By Monday, according to an internal email obtained by Gawker, Burson was already trying to recruit companies from the industry featured in the column as clients. Burson Executive Vice President (and former Bill Clinton speechwriter) Josh Gottheimer urged Burson's senior staff—including Founding Chairman Harold Burson, US President & CEO Patrick Ford, and others, to use Penn's column as a tool to approach clients in the camping industry about business. Not only that—he recommends that Mark Penn "send a note" to the CEO of these potential clients requesting a meeting.
That is (or should be) a no-no. A lot of people don't trust the news media anyway, and this doesn't exactly help the situation. The fault doesn't fall completely on Penn. Sure, he wrote the column, and one presumes that with his vast experience, he understands the difference between shilling and commentating. In any event, by accepting the offer to write, and presumably be paid for that writing, for the WSJ, he is agreeing to hold himself to the same standard that any reporter or commentator would be held to.
No, the lion's share of the fault lies with the WSJ. The journalistically responsible thing for the WSJ's editors to do would be to fire, or at least suspend, Penn for this. But that's not what they did. Again, Gawker:
Today, WSJ spokesman Robert Christie explained the results of the paper's thorough investigation like so: "Mark has assured us that through our conversations that he's complied with his conflict of interest policy. He does not have any glamping clients nor did they target them before the column appeared."
Unacceptable. As Gawker points out:
This was the Wall Street Journal's first real test of journalism ethics under Rupert Murdoch's ownership. And, surprisingly, they've ... failed, big time. [FYI, I took out a curse where that ellipsis is. -ed.]
Amen. Anyway, I'm not a professional journalist, but mine host here at the Trestle is, and perhaps he'll weigh in later.
