Maine Office of Tourism Targets Blogger
(cross-posted at Crooks
and Liars)
UPDATE: In a different state, it seems Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has banned some newspapers because he didn't like his coverage.
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It's likely that when Lance
Dutson went after the Maine
Office of Tourism (MOT) he didn't know he would cause a five alarm blaze.
He also didn't count on it spreading to his own front yard. It all started when
the Maine blogger
began reporting critically on MOT's marketing strategies and spending. The New
York ad agency in charge, Warren Kremer Paino Advertising, aka WKPA, was not
amused. Neither was MOT's pr rep, Nancy
Marshall, who sent email's to Dutson's wife at work, as well as her boss.
Then the group got really nasty. WKPA filed a seven
figure lawsuit against Lance Dutson for defamation, libel, and copyright
infringement. Luckily, he's attracted serious
lead counsel and co-counsel.
Oh, and did I mention that WKPA is also miffed because Dutson showed one of
their
ads on his blog? It also just so happened that the phone number in the ad
went to a phone sex line. Oops. Big mistake for an agency to make, wouldn't
you say?
It gets worse. In the
complaint, Warren Kremer Paino charges that Dutson falsely claimed that
WKPA was “pissing away” Maine's tourism money. They can't be this
dense about the First Amendment. A Maine blogger is right to question the use
of state money, especially a blogger who has a blog called “Mainewebreport.”
As Jeff Jarvis says, why shouldn't a citizen care about reckless spending of
the people's money? There's more from media critic Jeff
Jarvis, the Boston
Globe, EWeek,
The Wall
Street Journal Law Blog.
Even if the complaint has merit — and from my superficial understanding
of the case, at least parts of it are questionable — is this a smart strategy
for any company to take when confronted with a hostile blogger?A relatively unknown gadfly was irritating the agency and its client, the
Maine Office of Tourism. Now Dutson is a cause celebre in the blogosphere,
and his allegations about the agency and the tourism department are headed
for very wide distribution.Already, the first Google page in a search for “Warren Kremer Paino
Advertising ” shows entries from the Maine Web Report, but not the agency's
own homepage — and I'd guess that Google front page is going to get uglier
for WKP in the weeks ahead.
Everyone is beginning to feel the power of blogs. But a frivolous
lawsuit won't get anyone anywhere.
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