WASHINGTON -- One of the top communications hands in the progressive movement is leaving her post for another outfit with similar ideological stripes.
Ilyse Hogue, who for the past three-plus years has served as the communications director for MoveOn.org, will be leaving in the next few weeks to join the progressive media watchdog group, Media Matters, as a senior adviser in program coordination.
The move, she told The Huffington Post, was done with a desire to tackle new ventures.
"Change is good," she said, channeling her inner-Obama. "It catalyzes innovation and we're one big progressive family, so I'm not really leaving, just relocating to a different branch of the family tree."
In her time at MoveOn (Hogue started in 2006 as campaign director), the group has gone from something of a soundboard for progressive lament over George W. Bush to a five million-strong force within the Democratic Party. Noteworthy moments included both the controversial (an ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus for his testimony on the progress of the Iraq war) and the ground breaking (the town hall debate the group hosted in the 2008 Democratic primary). The most personally depressing, Hogue relayed, was the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court more than one year ago.
An oft-quoted source for reporters writing about either progressive politics or MoveOn's latest campaign, Hogue is less known, perhaps, as one of the bigger fans of Discovery Channel's "Shark Week." The network, on Tuesday, announced it was conducting a search for "Chief Shark Officer" -- "a fun-loving, fast-swimming personality" -- to head its trademark show. It nearly scuttled her planned move to Media Matters.
"It was very close between the two," she admitted. "But I figured we are not going to make substantive change in this country until we get a better handle on how to win the war of ideas. Media Matters is one platform in which we can debunk the stuff coming from the right but also deconstruct it and start to understand how to get our own ideas out there."