In an elaborate plot to get Hillary Clinton gushing press in People Mag, Clinton’s staff arranged to have her call into campaign HQ to give staff a rousing pep talk in order to then provide “color” to the magazine.
People‘s Washington Bureau Chief Sandra Sobieraj is clearly a “friendly.
Here’s an email exchange with Clinton’s traveling press secretary Nick Merrill on April 12, 2015.
Subject line: People Mag/Color.
SANDRA SOBIERAJ: Hi. Traffic on our Hillary stories is absolutely off the charts! Which only means an insatiable demand for more. Is there any color you can whisper on background at all on what Sec. Clinton is doing today or this weekend or anything?
Merrill then sent the bat signal out to others on the Clinton team:
NICK MERRILL: Anything we want to give PEOPLE? We could wait until we have a nice photo tomorrow and do that with some color.
KRISTINA SCHAKE (Deputy campaign manager): I would give her some color – they will eat it up.
NICK MERRILL: OK tomorrow.
KAREN FINNEY (Senior advisor): How about HRC calling in to HQ tonight to thank/fire up the staff w/a little from what it was like on your end and on our end here?
HUMA ABEDIN: Is this old? She called in 30 min ago.
NICK MERRILL: She means leaking that to PEOPLE which I think works. Others agree?
KRISTINA SCHAKE: Agree we should give it to People. They have 20 stories on their news feed right now and 6 are about HRC. They are giving us lots of coverage and we should keep giving them more so they keep it up.
And now for the really super cozy news…
NICK MERRILL: And if we’re good to them they will be good to us. AKA Sandra will take care of us.
In reply to the entire exchange, Clinton Media Advisor Jim Margolis wrote simply, “Go!”
Good work guys!