After my profile of the blogger Markos Moulitsas appeared in
our January/February issue, Moulitsas wrote a post
(link) on
his weblog challenging some of the facts in my piece, and in
many instances he turned out to be right.
My piece quoted a staffer for the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee indicating that Moulitsas makes calls to
prospective candidates on behalf of the DCCC. The source was
definitely in a position to know, and a review of my notes
shows that the quote was what my source said. When I emailed
him after publication for clarification, the source said
that while he had "brainstormed" with Markos, a different
blogger had made the recruiting calls. This is Moulitsas's
position too, and I take him at his word.
My story stated that Moulitsas speaks frequently and
regularly with DCCC Chair Rahm Emmanuel and Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid. In fact, he speaks regularly with their
staffs, never with Emmanuel, and only very occasionally with
Reid.
The speech Moulitsas gave to the Senate Democratic caucus
took place in the Kennedy Center and not, as my story had
reported, in the Capitol's LBJ room (the normal place such
caucuses occur). And I have no reason to doubt Moulitsas
when he says he talked about how Democrats can use blogging
politically and not about overall political strategy.
Nor do I doubt that he raised for Democratic candidates more
than the $500,000 I said he did. When I wrote that his site
gets "3.7 million weekly readers," I should have used the
technical term "unique visitors," which is the closest
available approximation of a website's readership, but is
certainly bigger than the actual number of weekly readers.
And the piece gave the incorrect date for an incident in
which Moulitsas responded on his weblog to television images
of cheering mobs dragging the charred, dismembered bodies of
American contractors through the streets of Fallujah. That
happened in March, 2004, not June, 2003.
