Update: Screenshots added after links and profiles were deleted. Don't people know it's the cover-up that gets you?
Part I of The Family Tree covered the basics on FiredUp and explored one of their most frequent contributors, Howard Beale. This is Part II.
Let's move on to Jeff Mazur, who at times has posted on his own name on FiredUp, but not in the last two years with the exception of the 2008 DNC. Not counting those pictures, he has gone silent. In fact, Mazur seems to drop off the map just about the time a new account gets going, which is the GeneralContent admin profile. General Content sounds like it's just a catch-all, and in fact, early perusal of the account suggests it was just that. From cartoons to announcements, whoever wrote General Content did just that for the first four years. An average of 15 posts a year were written from 2005-2009, and they were all daily news posts. Early this year, that changed. General Content developed a personality, laying out opinion pieces and writing as a new anonymous name. One of the first clues is a post at 1:43 a.m., January 30th in a blogpost complaining about confirmation of Nixon appointees. The next is a February 19th post on Peter Kinder and the Tour of Missouri, an important topic we'll get back to. The pace of the hits keep coming. A February 23rd announcement covers Transform.mo.gov, which is run out of the Office of Administration (where Mazur was employed, before getting a new position this month working in the office of the governor). The post is at 7:17 at night, after hours. In fact, what is curious, is that just about every post written about Kinder, or written as a person, comes after 4:30 p.m., or during a lunch hour. Over and over, with increasing frequency, you see blogposts written that are clearly coming from a single voice (with the occasional wrap up or general knowledge piece thrown in). With 19 pages of posts written (representing 190 posts since January 30th, General Content is now the second most prolific writer on FiredUp aftre .Sean). What's the favorite topic? Peter Kinder (though some shots at Matt Blunt are taken). In fact, this is what tipped me off. Sean Nicholson would write a post about Kinder and the Tour of Missouri, attacking him personally and posting articles. Then General Content would post another article on the same day, with a more personal tone. If Sean is writing posts on Kinder, why would he then switch over to the General Content admin to write snarky asides about Kinder. Sean has no problem being nasty on posts with his name. Why would he add posts in another name, and in an entirely different online voice?
It's quite possible that .Sean has written some of the posts in General Content, but it's also clear .Sean isn't writing all of them. Take this fawning post on Jay Nixon. Who wrote this?
At the same time, he protected critical state investments in education, health care and public safety. And his budget actually increased K-12 investments in our kids' futures.
The months ahead won't be easy, but with steady, principled leadership, Missouri will weather the economic crisis.
The posts are mostly at lunchtime, and at night, but not all of them. Someone is deliberately writing on about Missouri government, but trying to make it on personal time. It's almost as if they've been told to be careful about writing during work hours. Sadly, blogging can be an addiction, and following the rules isn't always easy. There are certainly posts made during working hours, something that would be a clear ethics breach.
Why is this important? First, we know that Jeff Mazur is tied into FiredUp, but other web evidence suggests that Jeff Mazur is indeed the person who uses General Content as an additional anonymous account from which to write.
Jeff Mazur, along with Julie Terbrock and Laura Egerdal (currently Director of Communications for Robin Carnahan), was a prime driver of Missourians for Fair Elections, an astroturf coalition designed to stop the Missouri Voter ID bill. The two bloggers for the original blog were "Laura Egerdal" and "General Content." Mazur's role was never fully explained, but we can be sure that he used the moniker "General Content," because that blogger linked a friend of theirs in their profile, the Spoon and McR Show.
Spoon and McR are two Mizzou loving gals out to have a good time, and what do you know, they love Mazur, and think he tells a great story (yes, this has all been saved and archived, even though the blog has been removed).
(Update: The two links are now dead, but I''ve posted screenshots. The GeneralContent profile on Blogger and the SpoonandMcR blogpost linking Mazur to the GeneralContent profile were both taken down less than six hours after this post was published. And I'd like to thank the two dozen unique visitors from mo.gov who surfed to my site today).
It's number 26 there.
What you have there is Jeff Mazur attached in two ways to the General Content author profile on Blogger. It's not that common a profile, and considering the number of posts put out that cover topics Mazur would be deeply familiar with, one can likely conclude that Jeff has got the blogging bug bad, but can't write under his own name, so he continues to do so under the name General Content, where he explicitly and viciously attacks the Lieutenant Governor while praising Jay Nixon (and occasionally sliding in nice things about Robin Carnahan, who has once again brought Mindy Mazur (Jeff's wife_ on board to run her Senate campaign) If Jeff has access to the General Content profile and is writing during work hours, that's not good.
What are good Missouri citizens to do? Could Jay Nixon have an employee attacking Peter Kinder anonymously from a partisan blog? It's time to find out. Part III.
Nicely done. As a long-time blogger, I have a real problem with those too gutless to put their names on their posts. I had a brief email exchange with someone claiming to be "Howard Beale," defending his right to stay in the shadows.
A few blog posts from spring of last year...
http://www.smays.com/default/tag/howard-beale
I had this plan to "out" HB be claiming that "I" was he, knowing that only the real Howard Beale could prove otherwise.
But my friends stopped talking to me so I had to end the prank.
Honestly, I don't give a shit what someone want to say on their blog, but they should have the courage of their convictions and use their real name.
Full Disclosure: I work for Learfield Communications which is the the parent company of The Missourinet. I work in a different department and have no editorial involvement with the newsroom.
Posted by: Steve Mays | 07/28/2009 at 08:35 AM