Why was Hillary Clinton’s campaign so fraught with back stabbing,disorganization? Well, Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn was chief strategist and pollster, and he was probably worried about his next checks more than he was about President Hillary Clinton becoming reality. Gawker exposes Penn leveraging his Wall Street Journal column on microtrends to parlay new clients for his firm.

Mark Penn’s latest (old, and none too insightful) ‘Microtrend’ column is about “glamping”—glamorous camping. It ran last weekend. By Monday, according to an internal email obtained by Gawker, Burson was already trying to recruit companies from the industry featured in the column as clients. Burson Executive Vice President (and former Bill Clinton speechwriter) Josh Gottheimer urged Burson’s senior staff—including Founding Chairman Harold Burson, US President & CEO Patrick Ford, and others, to use Penn’s column as a tool to approach clients in the camping industry about business.

via Leak: How Mark Penn Converts His Wall Street Journal Column into P.R. Clients – Mark Penn – Gawker.

Get it? Write mini-press release, disguise as op-ed, contact company, ask them if they want to pay for more, collect check for journalism from Wall Street Journal.