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A major political vendor is pouring money into a new digital news venture in Virginia, which will now be in the ethically tricky position of covering many of the same people its top investor is working to elect—or defeat.
Acronym, a dark money group that owns a major progressive digital firm, is investing seven figures in a Virginia-centric news site called The Dogwood, Axios reported on Tuesday. The schedule of that capital infusion wasn’t immediately clear, but PAY DIRT stumbled on a number of digital fingerprints suggesting that Acronym’s involvement has already begun in earnest.
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The Dogwood makes no bones about its progressive leanings. But such deep financial backing from an explicitly agenda-driven organization raises questions of disclosure and journalistic ethics as the website covers policy fights and political contests that might involve paying clients of its largest investor.
Acronym is organized as a 501(c)(4) “dark money” nonprofit. It was founded by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, a veteran of the Obama reelection campaign who went on to prominent digital roles at Democratic super PAC Priorities USA and in the formidable political apparatus run by recently declared presidential candidate Tom Steyer.
In 2017, its first year of existence, Acronym was heavily involved in Democratic electoral efforts in Virginia. The group spent more than $200,000 directly on electoral efforts in the state, according to financial records provided to PAY DIRT. And McGowan coordinated all digital politicking on behalf of Gov. Ralph Northam’s winning campaign, Axios reported at the time.
In the years since, Acronym created a newsletter called For What It’s Worth, an offshoot of which focused on Virginia specifically. The name is similar to that of Dogwood’s parent company, For What It’s Worth Media, Inc., which was incorporated in March by the same law firm, Perkins Coie, that formed Acronym two years earlier. That company’s dormant website is hosted at the same IP address as the websites acronymnewscorp.com and gameofelections.com, a site where Acronym hosted a Game of Thrones-themed microsite about the 2020 election.
Two Dogwood contributors, Jeremy Flood and Jordan Beyer, list themselves as Acronym employees on their LinkedIn pages, though an Acronym attorney said both are employed by Dogwood, not Acronym. Gerard Niemira, who is listed as Acronym’s CTO on the group’s website, also maintained an author page on the Dogwood website. Niemira now runs Shadow Inc., a technology company affiliated with Acronym. Another Shadow Inc. employee, Ahna Rao, also had a Dogwood author page.
The many links between the two groups underscore the ethical pitfalls for The Dogwood in covering issues and elections in which Acronym is involved. The latter has received donations from some of the most prominent groups in Democratic politics, including Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action Committee and Giffords PAC, the gun control group founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband, current Arizona Senate candidate Mark Kelly.
Since last month, The Dogwood has covered both NextGen and Giffords favorably. On June 27, after Acronym employees had already begun contributing to the site, The Dogwood ran a story headlined, “NextGen America and Emily’s List fighting to flip Virginia blue.”
Dogwood managing editor Meghan McCarthy, who previously cofounded Morning Consult, did not respond to inquiries about the site’s relationship with Acronym and whether it would disclose its that relationship in coverage of Acronym donors or clients.
Those sorts of ethical quandaries have faced other news websites with similar financial involvement by political vendors. The right-wing website Big League Politics, for instance, is owned by a prominent Republican campaign vendor whose clients the site routinely covers. It doesn’t disclose those relationships, and has even gone so far as to scrub its website of an unflattering story about one of its owner’s clients.
For Acronym, the Dogwood investment appears to be part of a larger effort to push its message through less orthodox digital channels. And others have also served to obscure the interests behind them.
A Facebook page called Likewise Media has run more than $600,000 worth of Facebook ads since last year, many focused on Virginia politics. More recently, they’ve attacked Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a top Democratic target in next year’s election. None of the ads disclosed that Acronym was the organization behind them.
Likewise Media’s Facebook page didn’t mention Acronym either--until PAY DIRT reached out asking about it. In the last few days, a line disclosing that affiliation was added.
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