Jerome Armstrong

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Jerome Armstrong (born February 26, 1964, in Los Angeles, California) is an American political strategist. In 2001, he founded MyDD, a blog which covered politics with an openly Democratic partisan perspective, making him one of the first political bloggers. Armstrong coined the term netroots,[1] and was referred to as The Blogfather[2] for having mentored many other famous bloggers such as Markos Moulitsas in their early years.[3] He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's '04 grassroots presidential campaign, and bringing those tactics to campaigns globally.[4][5] He is one of the co-founders of Vox Media.

Background

Jerome Armstrong was an environmental activist in the late 1980s, working with Greenpeace and Earth First!. He later served with the Peace Corps, spent a year and a half at a Buddhist monastery, served in Americorps, with the I Have A Dream program, and did field organizing in Portland, OR in the early 1990s.[2][6] Armstrong has graduate degrees in Conflict Resolution and Applied Linguistics.[7]

MyDD

In 2001, he founded MyDD,[8] a blog which covers politics with an openly Democratic partisan perspective, making him one of the first political bloggers. Armstrong coined the term netroots,[1] is sometimes called The Blogfather[2] for having mentored many other famous bloggers such as Markos Moulitsas in their early years.[3]

In 2004 Jerome and Markos Moulitsas founded BlogPAC, a political action committee focused on progressive bloggers and politics online.[9]

Campaigns and Elections, in an early netroots profile in Oct-Nov 2005, as part of the article "Blogging Down the Money Trail", credited MyDD with being "the first major liberal blog." [10] In January 2006, the name was changed to "My Direct Democracy" as part of a site redesign, with a new tagline, "Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics."

Political consultancy

In January 2003, Markos Moulitsas joined Jerome Armstrong in a political consulting partnership called Armstrong Zuniga, before being formally dissolved in December 2004. Howard Dean hired them for a time as technical consultants in 2003. Armstrong introduced the campaign to Meetup.com and directing on online advertising and blogger outreach.[11] He worked with U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign in Ohio.[12] He also signed on with Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC to develop their internet strategy, before Warner decided to not run for president in 2008.[13]

In 2007, Armstrong was awarded the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award for Political Organizing by 21st Century Democrats,[14] "for his visionary leadership in working to create the online netroots community". In 2008, London Mayoral Candidate Brian Paddick, a UK Liberal Democrat, brought aboard Armstrong [15] "to help boost his campaign's online presence". Armstrong has worked with over 40 campaigns through the political consultancy group Webstrong within the Democratic party and abroad.[16]

For the 2012 cycle, Armstrong went to work with Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, and as a senior advisor with the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Super PAC which supports challengers against Congressional incumbents in both parties.[17][18]

Books

Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos co-authored the book Crashing the Gate: Grassroots, Netroots, and the Rise of People Powered Politics (March 2006). The book takes a critical look at the state of the Democratic Party, detailing the rise of a new movement that is reforming and taking over the Democratic Party. An Australian edition was released in July 2006.[19]

Business

Armstrong, along with Markos Moulitsas and Tyler Bleszinski, founded the Washington, D.C.-based Vox Media, a network of over 300 blogs and online verticals,[20] with funding led by Accel Partners.[21]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "IHAD" defined multiple times with different content
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ "The Blogfather", Alternet, June 15, 2005
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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