Politics beat story idea: Track a troll!

DailyKos has the drop on what's going to emerge as a top story in some campaign during the 2008 U.S. election cycle.

Comment and discussion trolls for rent

And here is the link to the ad that the DailyKos blogger found, from an Orlando, Fla.-area political consultant, who is offering candidates his services in arranging for hired writers to "flood the zone with comments from professionals who are ready to put your talking points on the blogosphere 24/7."

Op-ed page editors long have had to guard against campaign shills getting on their pages through submitted columns and letters to the editor. Now, that effort has expanded to blog comments and discussion boards.

Who's paying people to comment online in your local campaigns? Check the expenditures of your local candidates. Try to use blog comment features to contact a random samp,e of those leaving comments (this isn't always possible in many publishing systems, alas) and see what you find.

I'll bet some candidate is gonna take a big PR hit for astroturfing like this in 2008.

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