Received this via e-mail from Tim Tagaris, of the Pennachio campaign:
As a blogger, you are probably familiar with the story of March 4, 2005. It was not only the day Bob Casey Jr. entered Pennsylvania’s 2006 U.S. Senate race, but the day we sent a powerful message to the mainstream media, by way of the grass/netroots, that our campaign was one with great promise.
When the Associated Press left us out of their article that evening, we were forced to test the muscle of our grassroots organization. We asked our fledgling email list, along with local and national bloggers, to contact the AP and voice their opinion about the omission. I cannot even begin to guess how many emails and phone calls they received, but we got a phone call from an editor that Monday that simply said, “We got the message.” We have been in every AP article since.
Today we need your help again.
While some large papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and Allentown Morning Call consistently write about our campaign, others still do not, despite receiving consistent, timely, and relevant press releases from the campaign.
So, we created a special landing page at our website. I want to ask you to write on your blogs, and send emails to whatever lists you might have, asking people to visit that page. On it, you will find a list of 25 Pennsylvania newspapers along with contact information for each of them. If your readers are from Pennsylvania, encourage them to write to their local paper. If they are from elsewhere, ask them to write to either: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, or the Doylestown Intelligencer.
HELP US IN OUR “PRESS CHALLENGE”
This is part of a four pronged approach we are asking you to be a part of in order to ensure a fair and open primary process.
- Pennsylvania Bloggers
- National Bloggers & Blog-work (Kos & MyDD Diaries)
- Email List
- Google Ads – We have purchased Google advertisements for each of the papers and even 15 individual journalists that all link to the page linked above.
Elections should not be settled in smoky backrooms or editorial boards of newspapers; democracy demands that they be settled by a well-informed electorate participating in free and fair elections. Please help us make sure the people of Pennsylvania understand that there is a choice in the 2006 U.S. Senate primary and general elections.
If you’re wondering who Chuck Pennachio is, or what this is all about, see here. To my knowledge, Booman hasn’t come out on Pennachio’s side in the primary contest, but I feel safe in saying that we probably agree with Chuck: the days of smoky backrooms should be behind us.