David Berman, poet and frontman of the Silver Jews, once opined that “punk rock died when the first kid said, ‘punk’s not dead, punk’s not dead.'” This just feels like the right quotation to cite upon the realization that the Washington Post actually bought the rights (okay, “sponsored,” whatever) to a commonly-used hashtag today on Twitter. From Twitter’s official blog post about their coverage of today’s midterm elections:

The @WashingtonPost will make news themselves tomorrow as the first news organization to sponsor a Promoted Trend on Twitter. Click on #Election on the Twitter.com home page to see the Post’s election coverage, including breaking news on race results, reports from the polling places, and live video in the details pane.

What this means is that anytime you search for or click on an #Election tag today, a tweet from the Post will be at the top of those search results — and #Election will be a fixture on the trending list all day. Both the tweet and the hashtag in the trend list feature a notation that they are “Promoted” content. If you’re using a client like Tweetie or Tweetdeck, you don’t get the promoted content, which is certainly interesting. (I wonder if the Post knows how many users it’s missing out on due to this.)

Of course, this is a curious road for Twitter to venture down. Could any organization — with the kind of resources and cachet required to procure such a “sponsorship” –purchase a hashtag? How far is Twitter willing to go with this kind of promotion deal? It would appear as if they are treading on a very slippery slope — while furthering the perception that Twitter is little more than a medium for self-promotion these days. Twitter’s not dead, indeed.