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TigerPrwn
07-27-2010, 06:04 PM
I would bet that there are people in the media that are members of both of these lists, but I think TownHouse is the more influential of the two. I was wondering where all the big Propaganda artists hung, so now we know. I think Journolist might shape more media, but TownHouse, I bet they shape policy and politics and pump their "candidates" on the TownHouse listserv. I bet that is where they gather the real dirt. I think that JournOlist is just the tip of the iceberg. I would guess that policy/talking points is handed down through the different list servs as well through the members who are on both list servs. These media list servs are a giant octopus.
Greenwald surprises me.

Here is some information on the TownHouse listserv:


Meet the New Bosses
After crashing the gate of the political establishment, bloggers are looking more like the next gatekeepers.
— By Daniel Schulman Wed Jun. 20, 2007 12:00 AM PDT

Last June, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, former soldier, one-time Reagan Republican, and proprietor of the wildly successful liberal blog Daily Kos, sent an email to an invitation-only listserv known as Townhouse. Consisting of some 300 liberal bloggers, journalists, activists, and consultants, the list was an outgrowth of weekly strategy sessions held at a D.C. bar—a forum for brainstorming on issues and tactics, and a means of creating a "unified message," as Moulitsas later put it. Its members were bound by one main rule: Nothing from the list was to be quoted or distributed, which, this being politics, meant that a leak was bound to happen.

In the message that would end up putting Townhouse, briefly, on the outside world's radar, Moulitsas asked list members to "ignore" a blog item by the New York Times' Chris Suellentrop that revealed that Jerome Armstrong—founder of the popular liberal blog MyDD and a close friend and business associate of Moulitsas—had once been implicated in a stock-touting scheme. Suellentrop noted parallels between stock-hyping and bloggers' touting of candidates such as Howard Dean, who had hired both Armstrong and Moulitsas as consultants during his 2004 presidential campaign. Moulitsas, who had recently coauthored the book Crashing the Gate with Armstrong, told Townhouse members that these revelations were "a nonstory." "So far," he wrote, "this story isn't making the jump to the traditional media, and we shouldn't do anything to help make that happen." He urged participants to "starve it of oxygen."

As if JournOList isn't bad enough, the TownHouse list serv is run by Alan Grayson's Senior Policy advisor, Matt Stoller:


Townhouse provides the online equivalent of a political backroom for Democratic Party-aligned advocates, consultants and lobbyists. On this closed listserv selected liberals — including bloggers Glenn Greenwald, Markos Moulitsas and Atrios; film maker Robert Greenwald; leaders of liberal think tanks such as Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future; Wes Boyd, Tom Matzzie and other leaders of MoveOn; and other Democratic campaign and PR consultants — can confidentially discuss and debate their issues, strategies and tactics.

http://bigjournalism.com/sahiller/2010/07/27/journolist-2-the-townhouse-listserv/#more-99510

Bloggers' double-super-secret smoky room
Kos declares war against the New Republic, after a secret society of liberal bloggers is revealed.


Here was the next generation of would-be D.C. power brokers, kids in their 20s and 30s who planned to mold the political future. At some point, Matt Stoller, the preppy enforcer of liberal blogging, helped organize the group into a formal e-mail list. (An earlier version of the group was even called "Knights of the Round Stoller.") Over time, the e-mail list and the Sunday afternoon boozefests grew. Matt Bai, a reporter for the New York Times, was granted permission to attend on an "off-the-record" basis. People worried that there were Republican spies in their midst. Through it all, Stoller controlled the membership. If you stayed in his graces, and met the group's qualifications, you got yourself a ticket to both the electronic and the alcoholic conversations. At all times, the whole enterprise was declared off the record, to be spoken of in hushed tones only with others who knew the proverbial secret handshake.


In the short term, I expect things will change. The Townhouse wall of silence has been officially broken. The Internet is in a tizzy. My money is on Stoller and company creating a new list in the near future. I am sure there are several Washington watering holes that would be willing to lend their name to the enterprise. Wonderland? Bedrock? Toledo? We shall see.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2006/06/22/townhouse
:eek::eek:

Ironically, the author of the old scortching column above is none other than Michael Scherer- member of Journolist! HAH
Knights of the Round Stoller- jeeebus.

FrankRep
07-27-2010, 06:05 PM
'JournoList' Story Confirms Liberal Media Bias
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=254711


A July 20 article posted on DailyCaller.com, a neoconservative political commentary website, has put a spotlight on one of the worst-kept secrets in mainstream journalism — liberal media bias — by printing excerpts of e-mails on a private website for liberal reporters called JournoList. by Dave Bohon

TigerPrwn
07-27-2010, 08:06 PM
'JournoList' Story Confirms Liberal Media Bias
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=254711


A July 20 article posted on DailyCaller.com, a neoconservative political commentary website, has put a spotlight on one of the worst-kept secrets in mainstream journalism — liberal media bias — by printing excerpts of e-mails on a private website for liberal reporters called JournoList. by Dave Bohon

Thanks for the link, I am not sure if you are trying to say I should have posted this there? I was hoping to get some more information about TownHouse. I cannot see how there isn't a conflict of interest w/ Stoller being Alan Grayson's senior policy advisor as well as head of the TownHouse listserv. These sorts of conflicts of interest were debated when the Townhouse listserv was outed during the TNR/Markos/Armstrong battle, even the Kos were upset by the list:

Elite Liberal Bloggers to Themselves: Shhh!

Don’t Cross the ‘Cult of Kos’ or You’ll Live to Regret It
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/07/07/dont-cross-kos-or-youll-live-to-regret-it/


But Suellentrop at The Opinionator did broach what I thought was an important issue. He pointed out that Kos at one time (working for Sherrod Brown), and Armstrong even now (Mark Warner) do political consulting while running/writing political websites. So the obvious question, at least to me, is how does a political blogger who endorses candidates at his site create a transparent environment when he may also be consulting for–or have some other undisclosed relationship with–some of these same candidates?

Something is Rotten in Blogmark: Final Update
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/8/145235/7711

Are there any liberty candidates running against Grayson?

FrankRep
07-27-2010, 08:11 PM
Thanks for the link, I am not sure if you are trying to say I should have posted this there?

I just posted a related story. No worries.

TigerPrwn
07-27-2010, 08:22 PM
Thanks Frank, I didn't want to clutter things up or confuse things.
I did find this that was leaked from the TownHouse listserv, so I guess there are leaks there too:

ACORN Official: Gangster Group Will Be Bankrupt Soon But Fake Spinoff Groups Will Carry On The Corruption


There will be “a dozen or more organizations launched on the state level by staff who used to work for ACORN and leaders who developed their skills as ACORN members,” Henderson-James wrote.

The secret message was posted on Townhouse, an invitation-only discussion forum run by Matt Stoller, senior policy adviser to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.).
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:in5AyRQFT2MJ:biggovernment.com/mvadum/2010/04/01/acorn-dissolves-today-april-fools/+townhouse+stoller+grayson&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=opera
The email document is at the link above.



Sifry is also upset about my depiction of Townhouse, the invite-only email list administered by blogger/activist/consultant Matt Stoller whose members (Micah, are you one of them?) are select blogger/activists/consultants.

"You have one on-the-record source attacking Kos and other 'elite' bloggers for running a 'Skull and Bones' like email list," he writes. "That hardly is proof of anything in my mind."

Given that the first rule of Townhouse is that there is no Townhouse, it was quite a challenge to get even one person to talk about the list on record (though I spoke to several people about the list who did not want to be quoted, even anonymously). It's my understanding that any list member who speaks about it publicly, or even acknowledges that it exists, risks immediate expulsion from the list. Incidentally, that's precisely what happened to Maryscott O'Connor of My Left Wing, who was unceremoniously dumped from Townhouse after my article came out. O'Connor had this to say about Townhouse: "It's fucking Skull and Bones, man. The very secretive, behind-closed-doors nature of it is anathema to everything that blogging is supposed to be about: accountability. We are supposed to be showing the way, not skulking around behind closed doors, coming up with strategies. Those are the people who we're trying to fight. I know about 'the real world' and all that shit. But we're the idealists, aren't we?"
https://motherjones.com/mojo/2007/06/blogger-hubris-30