Tech/Political Reporter Joins Meg Whitman Campaign

Tech/Political Reporter Joins Meg Whitman Campaign

Mary Anne Ostrom and I traded eBay stories when we sat together at the first eBay Live user convention in Anaheim in 2002. Mary Anne was covering the tech beat for the San Jose Mercury News at the time, and she later began covering politics for the newspaper. As recently as September, Mary Anne called me to find out what I thought of Meg Whitman's move from eBay CEO to politician for an article she was writing. She was uniquely qualified to cover the campaign and, as the call demonstrated, she did her research thoroughly.

Now, Mary Anne works for Whitman.

This is a classic Meg Whitman tactic and demonstrates why it is not just the money spent on advertising that will matter in her gubernatorial campaign. eBay used such street tactics to compete in the business world, and with the help of her friends, her campaign is likely to do the same.

I had been looking forward to Mary Anne's coverage of the race, and her departure leaves a void.

With newspapers hemorrhaging (our own Boston Globe is in peril), we might find this a trend - that the journalists who know the most about companies and politicians go join the entities on whom they once reported - going from "Hacks" to "Flacks," in journalism-lingo.

For instance, the Associated Press' Rachel Konrad, who also reported on Silicon Valley technology companies, left the AP to become Senior Communications Manager at Silicon Valley's Tesla Motors, according to Gawker's Valleywag blog.

The Sacramento Bee reported Ostrom's departure from the Mercury News, calling it "another blow to California's dwindling political press corps."

Update: Someone asked in the comments, what did I think of Meg getting into politics. Kenneth Corbin of InternetNews.com interviewed me in February about it as an industry observer and did a nice job of capturing some of my thoughts on the matter, if anyone is interested.