Unjournalism

Kudos to New Media Strategies

Posted on February 26th, 2007 by Mike Keliher

I’ve written before (with a post that probably should have ended with a question mark, for the sake of fairness) about New Media Strategies, a company that, put simply, helps organizations improve their online image. That post was a bit critical, but today, I’m all about throwing mad props (as they kids say) at NMS.

The Boston Globe writes about blogs that cover politics and some alleged cases of astroturfing — that is, people committing acts of a fake-grass-roots nature. An interesting article, it is, but the part that caught my eye was this:

“You need to engage [bloggers] as if they are any other powerful constituency,” said Peter Greenberger of New Media Strategies, an Arlington, Va.-based consulting firm that works with candidates and corporations to improve their image on the Internet.

Greenberger said his firm was not working for any 2008 candidates, but had turned away requests by some candidates to woo activists through online “astroturf” campaigns. Astroturf, in political parlance, refers to campaigns organized by public relations firms to create a false image of grass-roots support. [emphasis mine]

Kudos to New Media Strategies for sticking to its code of ethics and not simply doing anything that brings money in the door. Who knows who these candidates were or how much fame and fortune were at stake here, but this is the kind of PR-business ethics I’m proud to read about.