The latest in George Phillies' steady stream of press releases says they "now reach more than 6,500 media contacts across the United States" and that his (excellent) anti-Romney Dec 20 release emphasizing the Constitution over the Bible has drawn "major press coverage". However, it cites coverage only in the blogs of the Wall Street Journal, Austin Statesman and a Nashville TV station -- as opposed to their official news reporting.
The release also says "Phillies 2008 is one of the few Libertarian Presidential campaigns to earn major press coverage." For the candidates we cover, here are the number of hits returned by a Google News search since Jan 1 2007 for the candidate name and the keyword "libertarian":
16 Root
13 Kubby
9 Phillies
2 Smith
The same search for Ron Paul yields 1,210 hits. (Click the candidate name to rerun the searches for updated results.)
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2 comments:
A few points here. One is that this was not, in fact, a press release at all. It was an informational release that was not sent to the press but only released to Libertarian lists and our own volunteers.
Second, the 6500+ number indicates how many press outlets RECEIVE our press releases, not how many carry the stories. We obviously have no control over whether they choose to run the story or not. The exact number, as of this writing, is 6,586.
That our actual press release about swearing on the Constitution rather than the Bible was covered by the WSJ, even in blogs, or the Austin Statesman or the television station is something rather different than mere passing mention of our campaign in some other story.
Mentioning Ron Paul's yield strikes me as a bit disingenuous. In our information release, we said that we were one of the few Libertarian Presidential campaigns to earn major press coverage." (Emphasis mine.) Ron Paul is not running a Libertarian campaign.
I also note that my search on "Wayne Allyn Root" +Libertarian yielded only 9 results.
If you only search on "Root" and Libertarian, you get a lot of bogus hits.
Happy holidays to you.
Carolyn Marbry
Press Director
Phillies for President 2008
http://phillies2008.org
Yes, everyone understands the difference between receiving a press release and writing a story about it, and I have no idea what you saw in my posting that could make you think I don't understand the difference.
Readers can decide for themselves whether the three cited blog stories constitute "major press coverage".
If I wanted to imply that Ron Paul was the same sort of candidate as the ones in my list, I would have included him in my list, instead of mentioning him outside it.
It's silly to claim it's "disingenuous" to mention Ron Paul in a story about candidates that Libertarians are interested in. The Philliies campaign does not get to tell Libertarians what candidates they're allowed to care about.
Click my link on Root, and you'll see that I search on "Wayne Root" OR "Wayne Allyn Root". Not a single one of those 16 results are "bogus".
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