Jerome Armstrong

Jerome Armstrong

: Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Author of Photo: Panayotis Vryonis from Athens, Greece

Overview

* Participated in disruptive protests with EarthFirst! and Greenpeace in the late 1980s
* Founded Vox Media in 2004
* Was a mentor to Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
* Worked as a consultant to numerous political campaigns


Born in 1964, Jerome Armstrong attended Harding University from 1983-87 before earning two degrees from Portland State University: a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Philosophy (1989), and an MS in Applied Linguistics as well as Peace Studies & Conflict Resolution (2002).

As a young adult, Armstrong served with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica and Sierra Leone. He was also an environmental activist who was repeatedly arrested for participating in disruptive protests with EarthFirst! and Greenpeace in the late 1980s. Armstrong subsequently spent a year-and-a-half meditating extensively in Buddhist monasteries. In the early 2000s he worked as a field organizer in Portland, Oregon.

In 2001 Armstrong founded the Democratic activist website MyDD.com (acronym for “My Due Diligence”), where he subsequently blogged from 2002-10.

In May 2002 Armstrong launched a grassroots website for Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. Over the course of the next two years, Armstrong was a key architect of the Dean campaign’s online efforts (such as advertising and blogger outreach).

In 2004 Armstrong collaborated with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Tyler Bleszinski to co-found the digital media company SportsBlogs Inc., which was later renamed Vox Media.

From November 2004 through November 2006, Armstrong was the owner of Political Technologies, a consultancy for political campaigns and organizations.

In 2006, Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga co-authored Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. This book impugned the Democratic Party for its antiquated methods and its ineffectiveness in seizing the reins of government away from the GOP. It also condemned Republican ideologues who, according to the authors, were ruining the United States on every level – political, social, and economic. Armstrong himself coined the word “netroots” to describe, as NBC News put it, “a 21st century version of the grassroots, door-to-door, union-local politics that used to work so well for the Democrats in the last century.”

Because of his work as a mentor to a number of young bloggers (like Zuniga), Armstrong earned the nickname “The BlogFather.”

In 2006 Armstrong began working on the 2008 presidential campaign of Virginia’s ex-governor Mark Warner, which ultimately was unsuccessful.

In 2007 Armstrong was a founding partner of Webstrong.com, a full-service online marketing and communications agency. He has been the owner of that company since 2011.

On August 8, 2008, Armstrong agreed to pay nearly $30,000 in fines in a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations that in 2000 he had publicly touted the stock of a software company (an Internet bulletin board called Raging Bull) without disclosing that he was being paid to do so. Under the agreement, Armstrong neither denied nor admitted to the charges against him.

Also in 2008, Armstrong was involved in a “pay-for-play” scheme whereby, as Buzzfeed.com explains, “a range of mainstream American publications printed paid propaganda for the [highly repressive] government of Malaysia, much of it focused on the campaign against a pro-democracy figure there.” The major player in this scheme was the conservative pundit Joshua Trevino, who received $389,724.70 from the Malaysian government, its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either of those entities. Armstrong, for his part, violated federal law by not reporting his Malaysia-related activities to the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which “requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.”

In 2010 Armstrong discontinued his work as a blogger with MyDD.com, in order to devote his time and energy to managing the online activities of Libertarian Gary Johnson’s 2012 presidential run.

Over the course of his professional career, Armstrong has worked as a consultant for more than 40 American and international political campaigns.

Further Reading: “Jerome Armstrong” (LinkedIn.com); “The Blogfather” (Salon.com, 5-31-2006); “An Army of Bloggers” (Reason.com, 7-1-2006); “The web’s candidate for President” (The Guardian, 12-18-2003); “Blog Pioneer Maps Political Strategy for 2008” (NBC News, 3-2-2006); “Blogger to Pay $30,000 in S.E.C. Case” (NY Times, 8-8-2007); “Other Paid Malaysia Bloggers Never Registered With U.S. Authorities” (Buzzfeed News, 3-4-2013); “Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched A Wide Range Of American Media” (Buzzfeed News, 3-1-2013).

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