Cory Booker Blogging at the HuffPo? “Oh No He Din’t!” “Oh Yes He Did!”

Earlier this afternoon, we passed along a report from the NYT’s Newark 06 blog, suggesting that Newark mayoral aspirant Cory Booker didn’t exactly “blog” at the Huffington Post. The Times gave this report:

[Booker is not] frittering away valuable campaign time writing for political blogs. The HuffingtonPost item was actually a lightly edited version of a post that had gone up on his own Web site five days earlier.

According to Mr. Booker’s press secretary, Sakina Cole, it was the campaign Web master’s idea to offer the item elsewhere. And HuffingtonPost obliged.

But now Rachel Sklar — the tomatoes are delicious blogger, and a new and exciting addition to Arianna’s talent stable — informs us that Booker did in fact blog at the HuffPo (and continues to do so).

After the jump, Sklar’s email to Newark 06, requesting a correction.

Here’s the email:

Hi Josh,

It’s Rachel Sklar from the Huffington Post writing in response to your blog posting about Cory Booker’s March 21st posting on the Huffington Post, linked today on Wonkette.

1. Cory Booker is one of the Huffington Post’s many bloggers, and has been since May 2005 – he’s actually one of the earliest Huffington Post bloggers (the site launched on May 9, 2005). See here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cory-booker/.

2. As with almost all bloggers, Booker has access to the system so he can post his own blog posts – he has an account, password etc. There is and was no interchange about the post between the Huffington Post and Booker/whomever posted on his behalf. It was entered into the system and then put on the front page because the front page editor thought it was worthy of note (which it clearly was!). Contrary to your account, there was no “offering” and there was no “obliging” at all – just an authorized blogger posting to the site.

3. Many Huffington Post contributors repost items they’ve authored on their personal blogs on the Huffington Post — Jay Rosen, David Corn, Jane Hamsher, RJ Eskow — it’s never been a problem before, and their authorship – or authorization – has never been contested. The Huffington Post is just another forum for getting their post to a wider audience, which is all that occurred in the case of Booker.

4. The original Booker Blog has no author listed on the blog post (http://www.corybooker.com/main.cfm?actionId=blogShowExcerpts) but it was written in the first person, as was his blog on the Huffington Post, so presumably he wrote it and claims authorship of it.

5. This is supported by his most recent item posted to the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cory-booker/the-larger-picture-in-new_b_17763.html - he is clearly writing in the first person and clearly his intention is to get his voice heard by the Huffington Post audience.

I would appreciate it if you could correct the record immediately on this. Thanks so much for your prompt attention.

Best,
Rachel Sklar

Exciting stuff! In light of the HuffPo post cited by Sklar — in which Booker blogs, “I write this rather rambling blog today from my apartment in Brick Towers” — it seems to us that Sklar has the better of the argument. So Booker clearly did “blog” at the HuffPo. BUSTED!

Three cheers for non-scandalous scandals and tempests in teapots! We are adding a correction to our original post on the matter.

Earlier: Cory Booker: Did He or Did He Not Blog?

READ MORE: blog, blogging, blogs, cory booker, huffington post, huffpo, newark, not blogging, pseudo-scandals, rachel sklar, tomatoes are delicious

Remainders: Still Inside the Media Bubble

• Rush Limbaugh on Hillary Clinton: “She sounds like a screeching ex-wife.” Heh, he should know. [Media Matters]

• Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan lands an $8.5 million book deal — and he doesn’t even blog. [NYT]

• If you liked the Martin Sheen sighting from today’s installment of Wonk’d, you’ll love these “West Wing” stalker photos. [DCist via Law Dork]

• Yeah, we disagreed with a lot of Tom Shales’s Oscar commentary too (such as his description of Reese Witherspoon’s acceptance speech as “ingenuous” and “beguiling”). [tomatoes are delicious]

READ MORE: Media, Remainders, academy awards, alan greenspan, book deals, dcist, hillary clinton, hillary rodham clinton, hollywood, inside the bubble, law dork, martin sheen, media matters, oscars, reese witherspoon, rush limbaugh, tomatoes are delicious, west wing