PR firm says it ghost wrote thousands of op-eds

[Póg mo 1,749]

Laura Bentz of Keybridge Communications describes her company as

a boutique PR firmfounded by a former writer for the Wall Street Journalthat specializes in writing and placing op-eds. With some of the countrys most influential trade groups and global corporations as clients, we run many of the major op-ed campaigns in the US. We place roughly 3,000 op-eds per year.

On its website, Keybridge openly claims to be able to brand a CEO by putting op-eds into newspapers in virtually every major city.

Less openly, Keybridge carefully markets its services with a PDF that names people for whom it claims to have written and placed op-eds.

For a mere $5,000, Keybridge offers this service in the PDF:

First, we write a 500800 word op-ed. Then we place it in one or more newspapers around the country. If were pitching to a national audience, we guarantee that well reach at least 50,000 readers. Includes media monitoring.

The PDF claims credit for and includes full images of op-eds in the following newspapers by these individuals:

Wall Street Journal, an op-ed by Bill Ingram, vice president of Adobe Analytics and Adobe Social.

Washington Post, an op-ed by Doc Woods, a member of Virginians for Quality Healthcare.

Los Angeles Daily News, an op-ed by James G. Nondorf, vice president for enrollment and student advancement at the University of Chicago, and Jarrid J. Whitney, executive director of admissions and financial aid at Cal Tech.

Newsday, an op-ed by Patricia Morton, Dean and Professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing.

USA Today, an op-ed by Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam.

Of course, it goes without saying that organizations and political campaigns and businesses have staff ghost write or draft or assist with op-eds by their figureheads. So this could be described as merely outsourcing that service to a PR firm. But its considerably more damaging to public communications than that, I think.

WaPo: Virginia Can't Afford Its Population Boom

Keybridge says its responsible for writing this anti-immigration op-ed and getting it into the Washington Post.

For one thing, there are millions of people with important and new and different things to say who do not have $5,000 to spend on saying it. Read these op-eds in the PDF and see if you can claim they are in the top 1,000 youve seen. Is there one among them youll have a hard time forgetting?

Additionally, paying $5,000 for this service is not simply paying for research or editing. Its paying for the unfair advantage of having your op-ed pitched by people whove built cozy relationships with op-ed page editors, and who in at least some cases used to be op-ed page editors.

Even worse, its paying for the insider skill of churning out or transforming an op-ed into just the sort of familiar, boring, cookie-cutter columns that clutter up the dying institution of the daily, dead-tree, advertising-and-rewritten-government-statement sheets we call major newspapers.

This is why the more stimulating op-eds are often to be found on independent websites.

But to the extent that this service can really reach 50,000 people whom one wouldnt have otherwise reached, it is part of the corruption of a thoroughly corrupt communications system. Its part of the rigging of everything that breeds cynicism and resentment.

Do op-ed page editors know that Keybridge pitches op-eds that it claims to have ghost-written? Are they all completely, or only partially, ghost-written? Those might be questions for some future WikiLeaks release.

Meanwhile, heres a fun fact: Keybridge is a supposedly savvy PR firm in Washington, DC, that bears the name of a bridge named for Francis Scott Key, who owned people as slaves, supported killings of African-Americans, penned an anti-Muslim poem that later became a celebration of killing people escaped from slavery and of a flag surviving a battle that killed human beings during a war that failed to conquer Canada but succeeded in getting the White House burned. That revised poem became the US national anthem. Great image, guys! Id pay $5,000 for that.

http://fair.org/home/pr-firm-says-it-ghost-wrote-thousands-of-op-eds-in-major-us-papers/

[Jacque67 7,328]

Ahh..provenance....does it matter? If the op-ed provides a good read, who cares who wrote it?

[Póg mo 1,749]

Ahh..provenance....does it matter? If the op-ed provides a good read, who cares who wrote it?

You like reading propaganda? You know, propaganda specifically designed to influence public opinion, using professional writers whose goal is to push an agenda? Edited September 2, 2016 by Póg mo

[Jacque67 7,328]

You like reading propaganda? You know, propaganda specifically designed to influence public opinion, using professional writers whose goal is to push an agenda?

Do I like it? no. Do I read it? Yes.

Anything less would be negligent.

Only idiots judge articles by the name attached to a piece.

[Boiler 43,381]

And this is news?, anybody reading the Drive By's would be aware of this.

[smilesammich 10,727]

For one thing, there are millions of people with important and new and different things to say who do not have $5,000 to spend on saying it.

this is everything.

[Póg mo 1,749]

this is everything.

Exactly.

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

Exactly.

It's the same reason why we should be concerned about the annihilation of Gawker through the legal system, whether Gawker's journalism is defensible or not.