Jerome Armstrong (born February 26, 1964, in Los Angeles, California) is an American political strategist and blogger. He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's '04 grassroots Presidential campaign,[1] and one of the leading web strategists in the world.[2] Also one of the founders of SBNation.com, a sports-blogging company based in Washington DC.
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Jerome Armstrong was an environmental activist in the late 1980s, working with Greenpeace and Earth First!. He later served with the Peace Corps, spent a year and a half at a Buddhist monastery, served in Americorps, with the I Have A Dream program, and did field organizing in Portland, OR in the early 1990s.[3][4] Armstrong has graduate degrees in Conflict Resolution and Applied Linguistics.[5]
In 2001, he founded MyDD,[6] a blog which covers politics with an openly Democratic partisan perspective, making him one of the first political bloggers. Armstrong coined the term netroots,[7] is sometimes called The Blogfather[3] for having mentored many other famous bloggers such as Markos Moulitsas in their early years.[8]
In Campaigns and Elections, an early netroots profile in Oct-Nov 2005 as part of the article "Blogging Down the Money Trail", MyDD is credited by the magazine with being "the first major liberal blog." [9] In January 2006, the name was changed to "My Direct Democracy" as part of a site redesign, with a new tagline, "Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics."
Jerome Armstrong does internet and campaign strategy consulting for various advocacy organizations and campaigns.
In January 2003, Markos Moulitsas joined Jerome Armstrong in a political consulting partnership called Armstrong Zuniga, before being formally dissolved in December 2004. Howard Dean hired them for a time as technical consultants in 2003. Armstrong introduced the campaign to Meetup.com and directing on online advertising and blogger outreach.[10]
In 2005, Armstrong worked for New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jon Corzine and U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign in Ohio.[11] He also signed on with Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC to develop their internet strategy, before Warner decided to not run for President in 2008.[12]
In 2007, Armstrong was awarded the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award for Political Organizing by 21st Century Democrats,[13] "for his visionary leadership in working to create the online netroots community". In 2008, London Mayoral Candidate Brian Paddick, a UK Liberal Democrat, brought aboard Armstrong [14] "to help boost his campaign's online presence".
Before his political career, Armstrong worked as an online day trader.[15] Based on 1999 postings made on stock trading websites, in April 2003, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil action suit against Armstrong alleging stock promotion without disclosing of compensation. In September 2003, Armstrong submitted a response to the Court in which he denied the allegations, then agreed to a settlement with the SEC in December 2003 that neither admitted or denied the allegations of the complaint, and later paid a nearly $30,000 fine.[16][17] The New York Times, in a post-settlement interview wrote, "Mr. Armstrong was very candid about his day-trading days, calling himself an "uneducated investor" and a "small fish" who got caught up in a much bigger trading scam."[18]
Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos co-authored the book Crashing the Gate: Grassroots, Netroots, and the Rise of People Powered Politics (March 2006). The book takes a critical look at the state of the Democratic Party, detailing the rise of a new movement that is reforming and taking over the Democratic Party. An Australian edition was released in July, 2006.[19]
In addition to political pursuits, Armstrong, along with Markos Moulitsas and SB Nation President Tyler Bleszinski (of Athletics Nation), is a co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based SB Nation, a network of over 280 sports blogs. The network now covers all teams of the MLB, the NBA, NFL, College Sports, Pro Cycling, and other sports. Former AOL programming chief Jim Bankoff is now chairman and CEO of SBNation,[20] and mid-seven-figure funding led by Accel Partners has been secured for the network of sports blogs.[21]