Media Trackers has had quite a week, beginning with …

A low-profile Google Group used by over 1,000 state and national leftwing leaders and activists has been discovered thanks to Wisconsin’s open records law. A Media Trackers inquiry into the actions of a University of Wisconsin professor turned up records and communications from “Gamechanger Salon,” an online community that provides a forum for leftwing activists and leaders to share tactics, strategies and opinions.

Operating as a closed Google Group, much of what the network does is unavailable for public review. However, a document listing the network’s membership and a policy manual describing the mission and ground rules for the entity were accessible when Media Trackers discovered a non-password protected link in the emails obtained through an open records request of a University of Wisconsin professor. …

Gamechanger Salon is comprised of “experienced change makers from different ‘worlds’ of the movement to share stories, honest reflections, interesting articles, and provocative ideas on how we build a stronger, more coordinated, more game-changing movement for the 21st Century” according to the policy manual.

The group has the self-described goal of creating a “more coordinated” movement for liberals across the country. …

Media Trackers’ open records request focused on the records of University of Wisconsin Professor, and director of UW’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), Joel Rogers. Rogers, as the records request turned up, is a member of Gamechanger Salon.

Focusing on multiple “research” reports put out by COWS in coordination with Wisconsin’s labor movement, Media Trackers discovered the secretive national liberal network in an email sent to the group by Wisconsin Jobs Now organizer Peter Rickman.

That was last week. Then, on Monday …

[Billy] Wimsatt, the moderator of Gamechanger Salon according to a member policy manual, currentlyworks as chief ideas officer at Gamechanger Labs, an incubator for leftwing political and social action with the motto, “R&D for the movement.” In 2008, Wimsatt worked for the Obama campaign and the Ohio Democratic Party, according to his LinkedIn profile. A former columnist he is the author of several books and contributed columns to the Huffington Post until 2012.

In 2010 he co-wrote a column about voter guides for the Huffington Post with the controversial Van Jones, who resigned from the Obama Administration in 2009 amid outrage over his advocacy for a convicted cop killer and signature on a petition saying the Bush Administration willfully allowed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to happen. …

A book club section of the list contains recommended reading material and occasional quick reviews of the books explaining why they are important for liberal activists and organizers. Rick Warren’sThe Purpose Driven Church makes the list because, as Wimsatt notes in his review, “it’s a F#$@ING BRILLIANT and provocative book about the art and science of organizing that in part shows on many levels why right-wing evangelicals are organizing circles around us (even though much of what they’re selling is snake oil).”

Another book that Wimsatt recommends to the membership is Mockingjay, the third and final installment of The Hunger Games series. According to Wimsatt’s review, “Third Hunger Games Book. People say it’s great and complex parable of revolution – and it will help us get ready to leverage the next 2 movies better.”

Other portions of the extensive membership document recommend movies, songs, television shows, recommended websites and blogs, and goals for the online Gamechanger community. Two of the goals listed are “Recruit 200 key community-based organizers, especially women and people of color,” and “Recruit 100 key diverse bloggers, movement journalists, and pundits.” Another goal involves theorizing about a “TED-like conference for folks.” …

So far, the most objectionable part of this (other than the evidence that at least some lefties cannot communicate without using foul language, something you generally cannot accuse conservatives of doing) is that it came from a UW professor who apparently feels free to engage in political activity using taxpayer resources. This also might look at the surface like a lefty version of what the 2010 Walker for governor campaign was accused of. Beyond that, whether you think this is a problem depends on your feelings about leftism generally and the specific causes — organized labor, whatever feminism is today, the environmentalist movement, and abortion rights — whose advocates make up this cabal.

There is one additional detail:

A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon. Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group. …

Sally Kohn, formerly a Fox News contributor, now works for CNN reliably echoing pro-Obama Administration talking points and championing leftwing ideas as a network commentator. Kohn is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and e-mails show that she occasionally approached the group’s membership and asked them to promote her television appearances.

“I’m guest co-hosting CNN’s Crossfire tonight at 6:30pm EST, with fellow co-host Newt Gingrich. I would be grateful for folks (a) helping spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc to encourage people to tune in; and (b) tuning in and live tweeting during the show,” Kohn wrote to the group on January 14 of this year.

In another e-mail, Kohn pitched her TED talk about working as a liberal at Fox News. “I would be grateful for any shares and reactions. Here is a straightforward, sample tweet[:] Watch @sallykohn’s amazing TED talk on emotional correctness: on.ted.com/Kohn” she wrote. “Thanks for everything all of you do every day to make the world a better place!” she signed off.

Amanda Terkel, the “Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor at The Huffington Post,” is a member of Gamechanger Salon along with The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief,Ryan Grim.

In mid-July, Terkel and Grim jointly wrote a piece about a leftwing effort to push Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) to run for president. The pair of reporters heavily quoted Erica Sagrans, a fellow member of Gamechanger Salon and leading organizer of the “Ready For Warren” effort, and cited Billy Wimsatt’s support for the project. Wimsatt’s work as founder of Gamechanger Salon and the reporters’ own membership in the group, along with Sagrans’ membership, went unreported.

In a subsequent piece Terkel again reported on the effort to recruit Warren for a presidential bid, and a previous piece by Grim contrasted Warren with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

A former New York Times freelance columnist who now works as an energy and commodities reporter for Thomson Reuters is also a member of Gamechanger Salon. Anna Louie Sussman is listed as an “investigative reporter and journalist” on the Gamechanger Salon membership list, and while her beat focuses on energy issues, she has also writes about “local and international human rights and social justice issues” according to her website.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, a prominent and well-known periodical of leftwing political and social thought. She is also a member of Gamechanger Salon and a regular opinion writer for the online edition of The Washington Post.

A late-July column for the Post by vanden Heuvel entitled “Building a progressive alternative to ALEC” hit on a theme regularly mentioned on Gamechanger Salon: liberals must build an alternative to the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Lisa Graves, who leads the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and – according to e-mails reviewed by Media Trackers – regularly promotes material developed by CMD to attack ALEC and the right-of-center lawmakers who tend to make up the majority of ALEC’s active legislative membership. …

In addition to working at the left-leaning American Sustainable Business Council, David Brodwin writes an online column for U.S. News & World Report. Brodwin is a member of Gamechanger Salon, and on July 14 he published a column arguing that small business owners support a minimum wage increase. Fascinatingly, the Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of Labor relies on Brodwin’s American Sustainable Business Council to argue that very point in a recent “fact-sheet” advocating for a minimum wage hike.

Dozens of members of the leftwing network have contributed columns to The Huffington Post, and others have written opinion pieces for several other publications. The full extent of the network’s activity and effectiveness at amplifying and coordinating left-leaning messaging campaigns has yet to be fully explored.

The fact that a bunch of lefty commentators work together isn’t that interesting. The fact that the White House relies on them is more interesting, since the past six years have made it clear that Barack Obama doesn’t share the American values of the readers of this blog.

All this may prove the point Matt Kittle amplifies:

As more light shines on the spiders in the left’s web of political coordination, one question increasingly begs to be asked: Where are the long, secret investigations into liberal organizations in Wisconsin? …

As conservative activist Eric O’Keefe and his Wisconsin Club for Growth point out in the lawsuit, [Milwaukee County District Attorney John] Chisholm and crew haven’t gone after liberal organizations with the kind of prosecutorial vigor they unleashed in two overlapping John Doe campaigns — disparate treatment painstakingly outlined in the 76-page complaint, filed in February in federal court.

The plaintiffs say they can point to “numerous other activities materially identical to the activities giving rise to the manifold branches of this massive investigation … within Democratic campaigns and among left-wing issue advocacy and independent expenditure groups.”

A few years after the recall campaigns began, the same liberal groups and plenty of new ones are working to promote left-led causes and candidates. The question is, have they coordinated, and if so, have they done so illegally — at least under the John Doe prosecutors’ interpretation of illegal coordination?

What Media Trackers describes isn’t illegal, but thanks to the Open Records Law, it’s no longer secret.