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June 12, 2006

Putting out the fire with gasoline | Though much of the fury has died down, will this spring's spat between a blogger and Maine tourism officials have a lasting impact on the state's image?

By Chris Churchill
Searsmont, a quiet midcoast town huddled along the St. George River, seems an unlikely source for a World Wide Web-based furor. But it was here, in a house near the Fraternity Village General Store and the Searsmont Volunteer Fire Department, that Lance Dutson fired up his computer, danced his fingers along a keyboard and fashioned a web log that ruffled feathers among state tourism officials, inspired a federal lawsuit and kicked off an Internet maelstrom.

But blogs can come from anywhere, even from a hamlet like Searsmont. They allow anybody with a keyboard and Internet access to express an opinion on an established institution ˆ— in Dutson's case, the Maine Office of Tourism and the online marketing strategy devised by its New York agency, Warren Kremer Paino Advertising. Still, there are thousands of blogs, and most are ignored by the world, even if they gain cache among other bloggers.

Such was the likely scenario for Dutson's site, www.mainewebreport.com, until the targets of Dutson's scorn took notice and responded in a remarkable way. They sent intemperate e-mail. They told Dutson to knock it off or else (a request he ignored). Then in April, the primary target of his criticism, Warren Kremer Paino, sued for defamation ˆ— and visits to Dutson's site increased exponentially. "It did give Lance a platform," concedes Tom McCartin, WKP's CEO, "and he's done what he thinks is going to make the most of it."

WKP quickly withdrew the suit in the face of strong criticism from bloggers and traditional news sources such as the Boston Globe. "It was a public relations disaster," says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. And blowback from the spat could have lasting ramifications.

Some who watched the process closely say they are baffled by WKP's response and suggest a company that professes media expertise should have realized taking on a Dutson would rile the blogosphere and bring a wave of negative publicity. "That was the great irony of this," says state Rep. Stephen Bowen (R-Rockport). "[Dutson's] complaint was that they didn't understand the Internet, and in this fight the Internet was something that was used against them."

Palfrey, however, suggests WKP's routine work with the media may have led to its misstep. "How many doctors are good patients?" he asks. "How many lawyers are good clients? Not many."

Yet McCartin notes that even great lawyers sometimes lose in court, but no one suggests they're incompetent. "There are two sides to this story," McCartin says. "To suggest that we don't understand the media because we didn't successfully predict what the other side would do in this particular incidence is, I've got to say, a ridiculous point of view."

Turning up the volume
On his blog, Lance Dutson can occasionally seem unpleasant or even shrill. In person he is anything but. The 33-year-old Web page designer is a soft-spoken family man and northern Virginia native who came to Maine 12 years ago to pick blueberries and stayed.

Dutson's primary complaint with the Maine tourism campaign centers on its Internet search marketing. He maintains that the prominence of state ads on search engines such as Google routes Web surfers to the state's tourism site and takes traffic away from Maine businesses. Dutson says taxpayer-funded ads are therefore dulling the effect of efforts by tourism-dependent businesses, including some of his clients. "It's a pretty narrow issue, and it's pretty geeky," Dutson says over lunch at Darby's restaurant in Belfast, not far from his home.

Dutson says he could not have imagined his blog would cause an uproar when he launched Maine Web Report nine months ago. And he says he never intended to have its content focused on the Maine Office of Tourism and Warren Kremer Paino. But Dutson says that what he saw as an over-the-top reaction from WKP and state officials "to such an innocuous line of questioning" convinced him he was on to something ˆ— and to keep digging.

As Dutson describes it, he was the target of an intimidation effort. Rather than consider his critique, he claims, tourism officials went on the attack. He reports, for example, receiving an "anthrax-looking" anonymous letter from New York. He says he received hostile e-mail from state officials. And he says even his clients and his wife's boss at a Camden bank were contacted by Nancy Marshall, whose Augusta agency provides public relations services for the Maine Office of Tourism. "I'm sure she is a fine individual," Marshall allegedly wrote of Dutson's wife in an e-mail provided to Mainebiz by Dutson. "However, her husband's actions on his blog are reflecting poorly on the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville region."

Marshall declined to extensively comment on the allegations, referring questions to Jack Cashman, commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, which oversees state tourism efforts. Cashman concedes tourism officials made mistakes and says he takes full responsibility for the behavior of his department. "People reacted poorly on both sides," he says. "It escalated to a point where it went from the ridiculous to the sublime."

Cashman also does not hide his displeasure with WKP and the firm's "unfortunate" decision to sue. That lawsuit, filed in late April in U.S. District Court in Bangor, accused Dutson, who had placed some tourism advertisements from the state website on his blog, of copyright infringement, defamation and libelous or injurious falsehoods. It sought statutory damages of $150,000 for each of six images it claimed were infringed upon, as well as unspecified punitive damages and legal fees.

To some observers, including the Boston Globe editorial board, the suit was a clear attack on Dutson's freedom of speech, as well as a potential test of the rights of the blogosphere. "From what I know of the facts, it would have been extremely difficult to make this case stick," Palfrey of Harvard Law School says.

The suit electrified the blogosphere, which largely interpreted the move as an attack on its existence. "Lance alone had a small voice, but with help from the people who knew him through his blogging, he could be amplified pretty loudly," says Shel Israel, a San Carlos, Calif.-based blogger and marketing and public relations consultant.

That amplification led to tourism boycott threats and concerns here that the lawsuit could blacken Maine's image and damage the summer tourism season. Bowen, the lawmaker from Rockport, even called for the suspension of WKP's contract with the state because the lawsuit was giving the state a "black eye." Cashman eventually ordered WKP to withdraw the suit, which it did on May 4, because "the publicity the lawsuit generated was affecting the state," he says.

The right people for the job?
Warren Kremer Paino has had critics in Maine since it first won the state's tourism account in 2002. That's partly because the firm is an out-of-state agency, and partly because tourism industry numbers have been relatively flat since the agency won the account. The flap with Dutson gave some observers another reason to wonder just what WKP was up to.
"They haven't anticipated a lot of things. Their reaction [to Dutson] was very defensive," says Peter Rinck of Rinck Advertising in Auburn. "As an outsider looking in, I was thinking, 'That's strange.'"

There has also been speculation that WKP could lose the $3.2 million account as a result of lingering bad feelings over its interaction with Dutson: The Delaney Report, a gossipy newsletter widely read in the advertising world, recently suggested competing agencies might want to "sniff around" the Maine Tourism Office, because the WKP account could be ripe for the picking.

Cashman, however, says he is not inclined to fire WKP. "Their response to this situation is not what I would have liked to have seen," Cashman says. "Is it grounds for me to dismiss them? I don't believe that it is. It was unfortunate publicity, no question. But do you add to that by changing your ad agency just as we're going into the tourism season?"

And WKP does have supporters in Maine. Aaron Perkins, owner of the Dunes on the Waterfront in Ogunquit, serves on the state's strategic marketing committee and says he's been impressed by the firm. "Everything they do is really backed up with a lot of research," he says. "They really don't do anything off the cuff."

McCartin at WKP believes the lawsuit was widely misinterpreted by a press and blogosphere that was too eager to see his company as a bully and Dutson as a victim. In fact, McCartin says his office was a victim of the kind of personal attacks Dutson railed against on his blog: He says the company was besieged with nasty e-mails and the firm's receptionist "was treated to dialogue that would have made a longshoreman blush," but that no one wanted to hear his firm's side of the story. "I'll tell you what I was really surprised at: Nobody called me," he says. "People knew where to find me. But nobody did.
From the blogosphere, I could expect it. But from the Boston Globe?"

For his part, Dutson concedes with some chagrin that his tone on Maine Web Report degenerated as the scrutiny and pressure became intense, with some of his postings seeming more like screeds than rational, well-composed arguments. "It's embarrassing when you jump up and down and yell in public," Dutson says. "I'd much rather be sitting here with a reputation for being even keeled. But sometimes you have to get hot under the collar to get things done."

The Maine Web Report still irks McCartin ˆ— and even criticism of his firm's lawsuit has not led him to shy from an opinion. "There's a reason we got to this size and prominence in this business. We don't make a lot of mistakes," he says. "I don't think Lance Dutson is going to put me out of business anytime soon."

Dutson, too, has not been cowed by the lawsuit. If anything, he's ramped up his ever-broadening investigation into goings-on at the Maine Office of Tourism. Increasingly he has shifted the blog's spotlight from the marketing policies implemented by tourism officials to their personal conduct ˆ— with Dutson's arsenal aided by embarrassing and unprofessional e-mails uncovered by Freedom of Information requests. The withdrawal of the lawsuit, however, has lessoned his exposure, leading Dutson to confess a part of him wishes WKP would have waited a little longer before ending the suit. "It would have really broadcast the message," he says.

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