As best can be determined, Media Whores Online originated in Tulsa, Okla., in 1996 when a self-proclaimed "ADD Catholic with an IQ of 64" began an irreverent left-leaning e-mail listserv called RL-LNW, short for "Rush Limba -- Lying Nazi Whore." Shy yet passionate, its low-profile editor, Terry Coppage, took on right-wing agendas with cutting and often crude humor. He received some financial help from Marc Perkel, an eccentric computer programmer who ran against incumbent John Ashcroft in the 2000 Missouri Republican Senate primary, garnering 10 percent of the vote with almost no campaigning. Soon Coppage began publishing his commentaries on a Web site called Bartcop, and adopted the moniker "Bart."

Coppage's political rantings grew more fearless with each issue, and he thinks he might have been the first to coin the term "media whore." But that's impossible to verify, since the phrase now saturates the Internet.

By 1999, Coppage says, he began receiving contributions and corresponding with someone known only as JennyQ. Her numerous graphics and e-mails were witty, creative and occasionally angry. In 2000, JennyQ emailed Bart about going it alone with a Web site that would assume the media-task-taking responsibilities of Bartcop, but remain affiliated with the site.

Elsewhere in cyberspace, an Arkansas journalist named Terry Krepel was corresponding with a woman identifying herself as "Jennifer Kelly" on Salon's Table Talk. They chatted online about starting their own respective Web sites. He'd call his Conwebwatch, for conservative Web watch. She'd call hers Mediawhoresonline.

"I had known about it from the beginning," said Krepel, who eventually wrote a few articles for MWO. "I tried to stay away from it a while. There was a little bit more bomb-throwing than what I was trying to do."

A person identifying herself as Kelly, and representing MWO, has also corresponded with editors at Salon, and even claimed responsibility for the site in the May 2001 issue of the now-defunct Industry Standard, as well as in its own archived pages from February 2001. There Jennifer Kelly confirms "I am the MWO Editor-In-Chief," in a section labeled "Who and Why we Are."

And in June 2001, a Jennifer Kelly gave an interview to the Nation, describing MWO as willing to "mimic tactics of the wingnuts," by labeling those they disagree with as whores and refusing, on principle, to criticize any writer whose work they dub "non-whore."

Nobody, though, including Coppage, nor any of the other Web site contributors contacted for this article knew exactly who JennyQ or Jennifer Kelly is. And more recently, the mysterious "Jennifer Kelly" has disappeared.

For this article, the person, or persons, in charge of MWO insisted on only an interview by e-mail, and insisted on anonymity, signing all answers with "the editors" and employing the royal "we." They view themselves as grass-roots activists who use anonymity to ensure that "citizens who participate can do so without unnecessary harassment by those who do not like what is being said." They fear harassment from right-wing zealots, according to the e-mails. "Our contributors, ordinary citizens, have real jobs and real families, and some of them would most certainly face consequences if their involvement were known."

The responses did admit that the site has an outside funder -- but would not identify who it is, and would only say the funder was not actively involved in the site's content. "Those who could be described as 'most responsible' for the site's content have never been publicly identified as such anywhere, as far as we know."

And, for now, there's no reason they need to be.

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