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, and their writings are regarded by some members of the public relations industry as one-sided and hostile, but their work drew wide attention.
ActivistCash, a website hosted by Washington lobbyist
Richard Berman, has castigated them as "self-anointed watchdogs," "scare-mongers," "reckless," and "left-leaning." Rampton and Stauber have, in turn, argued that the ActivistCash critique contains several "demonstrably false" claims. 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." 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 Senate chief information officer Andrew Hoppin. In 2010, Hoppin and Rampton co-founded NuCivic, an
open source software company, which they sold in December 2014 to GovDelivery, a software services company now known as Granicus. Rampton currently works as a software engineer at Granicus. He also serves on the board of directors of
Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a
non-governmental organization that catalogs
fossil fuel and
renewable energy projects worldwide in support of
clean energy. ==Writings by Rampton==