Mark J. Penn, an adviser and pollster to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her presidential run, was a man opponents loved to hate.
Now Penn has offended bloggers for suggesting – heaven forbid – that they are making money.
Penn, assisted by E. Kinney Zalesne, made this claim in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.
“Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters,” wrote Penn in his column, “Microtrends.”
The Journal column, which Penn began last December, is an extension of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, a book by Penn and Zalesne published in 2007.
In the column, Penn crunches some numbers from Technorati.com and other sources and concludes that of the nation’s more than 20 million bloggers, 1.7 million profit at least somewhat form their blogging.
In addition, Penn concludes that about 2 percent of the bloggers in the U.S, 452,000 people, use “blogging as their primary source of income.”
That income varies. Of those who live by blogging, a small percentage make more than $200,000 a year, he writes.
Some people who blog for pay dispute Penn’s conclusion, or at least say they need more explanation.
Blogging in Computerworld.com, Lisa Hoover called Penn’s column “interesting - if not entirely accurate.” Penn gives a false impression, Hoover writes, that “the field is equally lucrative for everyone.”
And she notes that Penn’s numbers, even if they’re on target, aren’t exactly encouraging.
“Would you take a job in an industry where you only had a 2 percent chance of earning a living wage?” Hoover asks.
Writing on Econsultancy.com, Patricio Robles applies a stress test to Penn’s numbers and finds them failing, if only because Penn is relying on surveys that were not as conclusive as he may imply.
Robles also faults the Journal for stating, in a chart, that the figure for the number of people making a living blogging - 452,000 - comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In fact, Robles writes, the number comes from Penn’s calculations and is inserted into the chart of statistics from the bureau.
Penn added a response to his original column stating that he used the available research, though he was surprised there are “so few studies” that try to determine the number of bloggers in the U.S.
“There definitely should be more (studies),” Penn wrote. “Perhaps in the future I will do some original research.”
Penn does not indicate in his column how much money he is making as a blogger, though presumably his day job - he’s the CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller - pays well.
Penn is also president of Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, a polling firm that did extensive work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Until April 2008, Penn also served as Clinton’s chief strategist.
As the campaign faltered, Penn received a great deal of blame for a strategy that focused on large states and underestimated the importance of states that used the caucus method for their primaries.
According to Politico.com, Penn, Schoen and Berland earlier this year was paid $3 million owed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The campaign still owes the firm $2.3 million.
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