ABC's Congdon Shills for DuPont on the side

[babylonsister]

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/03/abcs-rocketboomer-powered-by-dupont.php

ABC's Rocketboomer Powered by DuPont

In scrambling to hire tight T-shirted Rocketboomstress Amanda Congdon for its website, youth-hungry ABC News scrapped a vital dinosaur-media rule: Don't let paid corporate shills be reporters.

The hiring of the DIY video blogger in November might have been heralded by some as a forward-looking effort on the part of a legacy broadcaster to attract younger viewers, but as Gawker noted yesterday, Congdon has been moonlighting for the chemical giant DuPont, hosting "Better Living Through Chemistry"-style webclips on the DuPont website touting the company's amazing products. That's a huge no-no for ABC News staffers, because it naturally raises questions about how aggressively the network covers DuPont's role in, say, building up Iraq's nuclear program or its part in giving thousands of people cancer.

Luckily for ABC News, Congdon—whose prominently featured online videos include a recent Q&A with Dan Rather and a report from the SXSW Interactive Festival—is an independent contractor. "She's a unique contributor who had deals prior to working for ABC, and continues to do so," says ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, who also stresses out that Congdon is solely responsible for the content of her videoblog segments. So ABC's normal rules and regulations don't apply to her, which is handy, considering Congdon is currently developing a pilot for HBO and recently completed a Ford-sponsored cross-country road trip.

But wait! Congdon's videoblog segments are also featured on the ABC's 24-hour digital news channel, ABC News Now, and Business Week reported when she was hired that she would "occasionally appear as a correspondent on the network's TV news broadcasts." (She hasn't yet.) Michael Clemente, the executive producer of ABC News Digital Media, told the magazine that he "would love to see her talking to Barack Obama, new people with new products, and all sorts of things." And Congdon's segments are coproduced, at least according to her personal blog, by Jason Samuels, an ABC News senior producer.

The DuPont deal isn't doing anything to endear Congdon to ABC News staffers, who have already complained to Radar about her low traffic, cloying online persona, and snotty posts on her blog about how lame ABC News's website is.

Ironically, Congdon's costar in the ABC News online push is one of the tougher reporters around when it comes to covering DuPont. Investigative reporter Brian Ross, who runs his own Web-based I-team, has aggressively covered allegations that Teflon, a DuPont product, causes cancer and damages organs. Maybe he and Congdon need to chat.

[underpants]

1. Neeeeeeeeeeever heard of her

I must be "not with the in-crowd"

[babylonsister]

2. Neither have I, but found it on one of the sites I frequent, so thought

I'd post it for anyone who might know.:)

[underpants]

3. Oh I understand it is good to know

Sounds like she is living it up with that ABC money but that is just my read on it.

Anyway

It was very interesting to read about this celebrity that I had no idea about. She seems to be quite the hot item in the internets world but maybe that was in one format and she isn't translating into the new one.