I have thought to myself on occasion over the course of this long campaign that someone could really write a full-time blog that consisted of nothing but corrections of misrepresentations of Hillary Clinton's positions and history, as some tried to do for Howard Dean back in the Dean days. Her campaign seems to have finally come to the same realization, and also now understands that in the contemporary media environment it needs a way to communicate with the many people who are going to write about Clinton without ever contacting the campaign or getting on its press lists. And so it has launched a new fact-checking blog, The Fact Hub. It's not an entirely novel idea. Back in 2003 Howard Dean's supporters created something similar in the DDF -- the Dean Defense Forces -- though that was an organically-occurring grassroots project fueled by the passions of its unpaid supporters rather than a coordinated, top-down, well-financed and orderly effort by the campaign. The DFF also encouraged letter writing campaigns, with mixed consequences, which the Clinton camp has yet to do, and the DDF never became a formal part of the Dean campaign. Fun campaign trivia fact: The DDF was started by Joe Rospars, now new media director for Barack Obama, and Matt Singer, now of Left in the West and Forward Montana. Pioneers, both.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
