Clancy

This is absolute slander

Francis' attacks were initially confined to political blogs that hold themselves out as independent or "news" blogs, but which actually are for sale to the highest bidder. If you buy the services of the blogger, you get yourself pumped up and your opponent smeared regularly -- sometimes with emails to the legitimate press thrown in for good measure as "news alerts" and the like. (Not all blogs do this, only some.)

Although the statement is qulaified,the language here is clearly designed to imply that payola is the rule rather than the exception. My experience with the local bloggers has yielded no evidence of this whatsoever. The New Orleans blogging community is largely populated by various sorts of concerned people who obsess a bit much over the news, care about the future of their city, and in many cases take an active role in attempting to better that future. While I admire Clancy's cynical imagination, and certainly will allow that such hackery is possible (there have always been ways for political operatives to spread rumors through the press.. I don't expect that to change any time soon), I really must take issue with his assumption that this is an adequate definition of "what blogs do".

Tangential other Clancy complaint: This is just bad analysis.

Donelon eked out a primary victory by less than 900 votes, and I can't help thinking that the 11 percent of the vote garnered by Libertarian candidate S.B.A. Zaitoon was a protest vote against all the dirt.

While some voters of a certain yuppie-ish demographic may like to affect superiority by pooh poohing "negative" campaigning, no one actually casts a vote in protest of this.

Update: David offers speculation as to the subject of Clancy's description.