Sheldon Rampton

Sheldon Rampton (born August 4, 1957) is an American editor and author. He was editor of PR Watch, and is the author of several books that criticize the public relations industry and what he sees as other forms of corporate and government propaganda.

Sheldon Rampton
Born (1957-08-04) August 4, 1957
Long Beach, California
OccupationEditor, author

Education

Rampton was born in Long Beach, California. At the age of one, his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician. Raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), he spent two years in Japan as a Latter-day Saint missionary from 1976 to 1978. Upon returning to the United States, however, he left the LDS Church, influenced in part by Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson.[1]

Career

Upon graduation in 1982, Rampton worked as a newspaper reporter before becoming a peace activist. During the 1980s and 1990s, he worked closely with the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN), which opposed the Reagan administration's military interventions in Central America and works to promote economic development, human rights, and mutual friendship between the people of the United States and Nicaragua. At WCCN, Rampton helped establish the Nicaraguan Credit Alternatives Fund (NICA Fund) in 1992, which channels loans from US investors to support microcredit and other "alternative credit" programs in Nicaragua.[2]

In 1995, Rampton teamed with John Stauber as co-editors of PR Watch, a publication of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). They were described as liberal,[3] and their writings are regarded by some members of the public relations industry as one-sided and hostile, but their work drew wide attention.[4] ActivistCash, a website hosted by Washington lobbyist Richard Berman, has castigated them as "self-anointed watchdogs," "scare-mongers," "reckless" and "left-leaning."[5] Rampton and Stauber have in turn argued that the ActivistCash critique contains a number of "demonstrably false" claims.[6] According to a review in the Denver Post, their 2001 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, offered "a sardonic, wide-ranging look at the public relations industry."[7]

Rampton is also a contributor to the Wikipedia open content project, and was the person who coined the name "Wikimedia" which later became the name of the foundation that manages Wikipedia and its sister projects.[8] Inspired by Wikipedia's collaborative writing model, Rampton founded Disinfopedia (now known as SourceWatch), another CMD project, to complement his PR Watch work to expose what Rampton perceives as deceptive and misleading public relations campaigns.[9][10]

After leaving the Center for Media and Democracy in 2009, Rampton became a website developer, joining an open government initiative led by New York State Senate chief information officer Andrew Hoppin.[11][12] In 2010, Hoppin and Rampton co-founded NuCivic, an open source software company,[13][14] which they sold in December 2014 to GovDelivery, a software services company now known as Granicus.[15][16] Rampton currently works as a software engineer at Granicus.[17]

Writings by Rampton
gollark: It's one of the things which would need more intrusive tracking.
gollark: No. That would be somewhat difficult to do.
gollark: One achievement can only be gotten by resetting your achievements, because I felt evil or something.
gollark: Anyway, I myself only have 380.29670000000004 achievement points™, because some of them are quite hard and browser horrors mean I occasionally lose my data.
gollark: The comments system has some identifier thing going on for allowing you to edit/delete stuff, and obviously I reserve the right to spy on the logs at any time.

References
  1. Pottmyer, Alice Allred (1998). "Sonia Johnson: Mormonism's Feminist Heretic". In Launius, Roger D.; Thatcher, Linda (eds.). Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History. University of Illinois Press. p. 381.
  2. WCCN 2013 Annual Report (PDF) (Report). Working Capital for Community Needs. 2013. p. 12.
  3. Chisun Lee, a writer for the Village Voice, noted of Rampton and co-author John Stauber's work:
    There isn't likely to be much corporate support there. These guys come from the far side of liberal. Saying so is not to detract from their exhaustively detailed reportage and calmly convincing tone; indeed, the book is generally light on rhetoric, and there's hardly a radical quoted.
    Chisun Lee, "The Flack Catchers", Village Voice, April 10, 2001.
  4. Manning, Anita (4 February 2001). "Their message: Don't trust experts The public must be skeptical, authors say (profile)". USA Today. ProQuest 408879145.
  5. Organization Overview Archived September 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, ActivistCash.com website.
  6. A Visit to the ActivistCash.com Website, SourceWatch (wiki permalink Feb. 25, 2008).
  7. Rosenberg, Paul (4 February 2001). "All's safe in twists of public relations experts Authors decry manipulation to downplay dangers (book review)". Denver Post.
  8. Rampton, Sheldon. "Re: Current events". WikiEN-l mailing list archives, 16 March 2003. Retrieved 24 January 2017. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-March/001887.html
  9. Rampton, Sheldon (11 March 2003). "Disinfomania!". PRWatch.org. Center for Media and Democracy. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
  10. Rampton, Sheldon (22 January 2005). "From 'Disinfopedia' to 'SourceWatch'". PRWatch.org. Center for Media and Democracy. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
  11. Wagner, Mitch (29 June 2009). "CIO Seeks Open Government In Brawling New York State Senate". Information Week. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  12. "Sheldon Rampton on the New York State Senate". Lullabot.com. 27 April 2010. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  13. Rosenberg, Matt (11 November 2014). "Open Government: State of the Union". Social Capital Review. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  14. Seward, Zack (15 February 2011). "State Senate tech guru is taking his gov 2.0 skills elsewhere". Innovation Trail. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  15. "GovDelivery Acquires NuCivic to Bring Proven Open Source Solutions to Government". Granicus.com. Granicus, Inc. 17 December 2014. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
  16. Chappellet-Lanier, Tajha (25 October 2016). "Merger news: GovDelivery and Granicus are now one". TechnicallyMedia. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  17. "Sheldon Rampton (profile)". LinkedIn.com. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  18. Brown, Valerie (29 November 2001). "Mad Cow; Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (book review". Eugene Weekly. ProQuest 362764093.
  19. Taylor, Philip. "Propaganda to Believe In." (book review) The World Today 59, no. 8/9 (2003): 20-21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40477061.
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