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.
Upon graduation from college 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 1995 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 Senatechief information officerAndrew 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
With Liz Chilsen:
Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities (1987)
^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.
^Manning, Anita (4 February 2001). "Their message: Don't trust experts The public must be skeptical, authors say (profile)". USA Today. ProQuest408879145.
^Rosenberg, Paul (4 February 2001). "All's safe in twists of public relations experts Authors decry manipulation to downplay dangers (book review)". Denver Post.