Reporting isn't creepy

Eric Muller suspects that Michelle Malkin has a ghostblogger:

Some have maintained for a while now that a person other than Michelle Malkin is writing and posting some of the material that gets posted with her byline on her blog. She has denied it.

To my eyes, the jury has always been out on that question.

But let's look closely at the last 36 hours at michellemalkin.com. 

At 7:16 a.m., she posted that she was "back from vacation."

Sizeable posts followed at 8:00 a.m., 8:46 a.m., 9:31 a.m., 10:16 a.m., 10:52 a.m. (a short one), 11:25 a.m., 11:37 a.m., 12:37 p.m., 2:09 p.m. (subsequently updated), 4:06 p.m., 7:45 p.m., 8:01 p.m., 8:19 p.m., 10:36 p.m. (subsequently updated), 5:49 a.m., 6:05 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 8:25 a.m. (subsequently updated), and then 12:31 p.m..

In that last message, Malkin explains that she is in Minneapolis, where she'll be giving a speech at 12:00 noon. Controlling for the one-hour time difference between the East Coast and Minnesota, I infer that she posted this update a startling 29 minutes before her noontime speech.

One wonders: when did she drive (or get driven) to the airport, fly at least three hours (if non-stop) to Minnesota, and then drive (or get driven) to her Minneapolis destination? And is there a red-eye from the DC area to Minneapolis?

The jury may not be in, but they're knocking on the door.

Jeralyn of TalkLeft characterizes Muller's post as "weird" and "creepy" and considers it to be borderline cyberstalking. I disagree.

Muller read Malkin's blog and noticed that there were posts that appear to have gone up while Malkin was in the air. He cited evidence, available on Michelle's blog. Since all the entries are archived, he presumably sat down and checked the previous 36 hours of Malkin's output. What's so weird about that?

Frankly, I always assumed that Michelle Malkin, like Martha Stewart, is the public face of a publishing empire. It never bothered me much. Her output is prodigious for any blogger, especially when you consider that she fits very regular updates into a packed schedule of media appearances, book promotions, and print writing.

However, Malkin insists that she writes everything herself. I'm prepared to take her at her word. Still she has no right to call Muller "deranged"  for wondering.

Authorship and attribution are important in the blogosphere and in journalism at large. Muller's asking fair questions and substantiating his thesis using Malkin's own writing. That's not stalking, that's reporting.

Journalism makes Michelle uncomfortable, but then, we knew that.

Comments

[nobody]

Isn't it true that you can write posts in advance and set them to publish automatically at a certain time?

[jhupp]

nobody is correct (ha!). I know that Pat Cleary does exactly that for NAM. He writes them before going to bed, and he sets them to publish some time the next morning.

[Tom Hilton]

I don't think it's necessarily creepy...but I don't think it's all that useful. The problem with Malkin's blog is the unhinged authoritarian xenophobia espoused there; demonstrating that some of it is written by Jesse rather than Michelle doesn't change that.

[Bill Hooker]

Lindsay's right, though -- it is not in the least "creepy" or "stalkerly" to wonder whether Malkin writes her own dreck and to examine what evidence is available to speak to that question. I had the same immediate reaction to Jeralyn's post.

[The Happy Feminist]

Yep. I don't think it's creepy or stalkerish at all.

I do think there are a million good explanations for the timing of her posts besides having a ghost blogger. Maybe she dictates her posts and has a secretary type and post them. Or maybe she has someone who proofreads them and then posts them. Or nobody's explanation makes sense too. Who knows?

[Eli]

I thought that Malkin had conceded that her husband Jesse Malkin at least helped with some posts. Maybe that's my imagination.

[[email protected]]

It would be impossible for her to hire someone because she could be certain that person would rat her out. How much could you pay a ghost blogger? $20 a post? How much revenue does MM.com generate? Less than $20/post I would bet.

[The Liberal Avenger]

I thought that Malkin had conceded that her husband Jesse Malkin at least helped with some posts. Maybe that's my imagination.

She has conceded this - and Muller simply called her on another likely instance. The fact that some of her work has been exposed as being the product of her husband has amazingly enough damaged her credibility in some circles on some issues. A racist screed calling for the incarceration of Arabs written by a photogenic and marketable minority is going to get a lot more traction than the same screed written by a largely anonymous, former conservative think-tank analyst angry white guy.

[bellatrys]

The possibility that Michelle's husband has been writing [some of] her stuff, backed up by previous chronological inconsistencies, has been kicking around for a long time.

And while yes, you can change the times on posts on most posting software, and you *can* also blog remotely with some of them [in theory at least] using text messaging/email software, it's not out of line for someone to at least raise the question.

And making snarks about posting timestamps is common - mostly along the lines of "Whoah, isn't it like 2 am in your time zone? What are you doing up blogging at this hour?!?"

Familiar, yes, but in the informal atmosphere of the 'net, hardly a serious offense.

--But when it comes to creepy, Jeralyn is hardly one to be talking, what with her rapist-sympathizer postings and bannings of objecting voices...

[NTodd]

Noticing such things isn't creepy, but it does seem to be of little value. And as somebody noted above, you can set posts to appear at specific times.

Besides, if she wants to own the piss poor, hate-filled writing, she's welcome to it.

[Pepper]

It might be a matter of child labor. She's got two tots, right? She might be putting them to work early. Or maybe their nanny? Or a pool boy? Something funny's going on.

[Uncle Kvetch]

She's got two tots, right? She might be putting them to work early. Or maybe their nanny? Or a pool boy?

It would go a long way towards explaining the quality of her prose...

[Thom]

I so agree. I saw that this morning and I was thinking Jeralyn was nuts. How the hell is that stalking? If it is, then I'm a stalker for going back and reading back posts here and at TalkLeft. Just dumb.

[Nonplussed]

Most blog software has a feature that allows post to be published at a certain time in the future. I used to use it to spread out the distribution of my content when I used to blog regularly. It may well be that Malkin has a ghost writer, but the timing of the posts is not proof.

[SL]

She also posted in a lot of other sites, including technorati blog, as columnists in various rightwing sites, and other guest blogging stint.

The out going linking pattern also indicate her team is pumping up the outgoing link to jack up her technorati and TLB rating.

note how her blog is competing against the biggest of the biggest liberal "group" blog in all rating system. (she practically run against Boing-boing and engadget. DailyKos, Arianahuffington are all group bloggers)

Either she is a superhuman, where even people like Atrios can't keep up. Or she has a team, digesting new information, compiling and quickly posting, then linking out, a little like what Wonkette group does.

--------

Also note that Truth Laid bare is now a rightwing outfit. Their rating cannot be considered reliable. I recommend everybody pulls out of that site.

[SL]

One way of checking is volume posting, and pattern of post time.

how fast can one type? Does she type her own entry. Is there any timing change compared to her early days of blogging.

All one has to do is ask her question, detail of her own 'entry' I seriously doubt she can even digest that many of her team posts. If she reads all of them, she won't have time processing other issue.

I think one of the more important thing to investigate is her "out linking' pattern because right now, the rightwing is trying to manipulate google, technorati, TTLB to jack up their low rating blog scene.

we are talking about massive google bomb and spam blog.

[JDRhoades]

Still she has no right to call Muller "deranged" for wondering.

But that's Malkin's schtick. Everyone who disagrees with Her or even dares to question Her is not just wrong, but actually insane. "Deranged". "Unhinged." Etc.

[Jason Weisberger]

I think you're dead on. Muller was just doing some good investigative journalism. I'm not sure why Jeralyn finds it creepy, or like stalking. Once you start appearing on TV as a "pundit" like Malkin, you should expect that people are going to fact check you. Times and whereabouts are certainly, fact checking. Muller made sure Malkin was the one saying the inaccurate crap that she spews out. You'd hate to be calling her a nazi sympathizing, jew hater if it was actually her dog using her laptop to post all that stuff!

[Eric Jaffa]

Michelle Malkin doesn't deny it.

She doesn't write in that post that none of the posts under her name were written entirely by her husband.

Instead her long post is sound and fury signifying nothing.

[Max Renn]

Muller has backed off his claim. but the crux of his issue is that he doesn't believe that she wrote her book, In Defense of Internment, alone. That's the main thing he's interested in, as it would further cast doubt on that already well-discredited text if it can be shown that Michelle would put her (and only her) name on something that was the work product of several people. This issue about her blog goes to credibility on that topic.

Jeralyn is way off here.

[Eli]

Muller has backed off his claim. but the crux of his issue is that he doesn't believe that she wrote her book, In Defense of Internment, alone. That's the main thing he's interested in, as it would further cast doubt on that already well-discredited text if it can be shown that Michelle would put her (and only her) name on something that was the work product of several people.

Would it? That seems like pretty standard practice.

[Robert Hayes]

Right...a woman is doing outstanding work (in terms of the quantity of her output, even if you dislike the work itself). So there must be a conspiracy to cover the fact that it's really a man doing the heavy lifting...because we all know that surely no woman could perform prodigal feats of writing output and speed. Their breasts get in the way of the keyboard, or something.

[Uncle Kvetch]

a woman is doing outstanding work (in terms of the quantity of her output, even if you dislike the work itself)

By that standard, I could leave a coffee cup sitting on a random bunch of keys on my keyboard for an afternoon and "outproduce" Malkin in an even more oustanding fashion. The only difference is that my outstanding work probably wouldn't include character assassination, schoolyard insults, and baldfaced lies.

[skippy]

jeralyn, as much as i love her, is way off on this. stalking would be hanging out in malkin's bushes (there's an image i'm sorry i brought up).

it's not creepy or stalking, but i would submit that it's pretty goddamn pointless. who cares if malkin's ghostwritten, other than to bemoan the fact that there's two people that think in that weird, twisted way.