Municipalist

Blogging does not equal venting

A valuable comment at a story from U.S. News and World Report about blogging teachers:

One of the more interesting things that I've found as I've started to get involved in the world of the edublogger is that---like any media source---blogs that are written in a confrontational style on confrontational topics often draw the largest crowds of readers.

We do live in a shock-value world, after all! Ask Nancy Grace. As a teacher blogger, though, I think that kind of conversation is unproductive and irresponsible.

We bear a responsibility to model collaborative dialogue skills for our students----and by doing so, we might just be able to elevate the reputation of practitioners in our profession. I'm proudest of the thousands of digital peers that I have crossed paths with who use their blogs to ask challenging questions about teaching and learning in a responsible way because they improve education at all levels while avoiding the controversy-driven mentality of today's media outlets.

Does this make sense to anyone besides me? Am I the only one growing tired of the partisan screaming and mudslinging that has taken the place of reasoned conversation in our nation?

Nope.

Arianna on handling comments: 'We pray daily'

Even big stars of the blogging universe such as Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, have been confounded about how to deal with the Commentocracy. In an interview with Jonathan Dube, she relates how her site has changed its tactics:

We started with pre-moderation only on blog posts, since we felt it was important to provide a civil environment for our bloggers (i.e., one where critical comments would of course be allowed but no ad hominem attacks or name calling). Our comments on the news site were originally post-moderated (i.e., objectionable comments were removed only after our moderators were alerted). We eventually decided that it was worth the substantial effort and expense to have human pre-moderation on both blogs and news. At the same time, we pray daily for a new technical innovation that will be able to automatically remove objectionable comments.

Speaking for many public sector bloggers: So do we, sister.

Passion equals traffic

"Blogging is a web marketing tool. It's outstanding [return on investment] is found in [search engine optimization] and in conversions ... but only if you empower your employees to contribute lots of passionate, human and most importantly, relevant content." From a comment by Chris Baggott at this link.

Should bloggers fear long posts?

Must all blog posts be short? Nope, says Jay Rosen, creator of PressThink. This is from his blog's self description:

“People don’t have time for …” reasoning was meaningless to me, and I didn’t trust it. It wanted to restrict my freedom to write what I think, but the whole purpose in starting PressThink was liberation: “Wow, my own magazine. Now I can write what I think.” It’s the same for most webloggers, I would guess. My interest was users who did have time for depth, in whatever number they may prove to exist, ocean to ocean, post to post.

But it’s more like: this is my magazine, PressThink … If you like it, return. In a tiny and abstract way, perhaps, my blog is part of the media marketplace, competing for eyeballs with re-runs of Law and Order. But not really. PressThink, a free citizen in a voluntary nation, doesn’t have to behave like a market actor. Thus my experiment in long form.

Well, sometimes "experiments" turn out to do a lot better than "market actors" anyway.

Anyone wanting to learn about the news media today, as well as how to craft a thoughtful blog, should read this guy.

'Behold the Commentocracy'

Having interviewed public sector bloggers at many levels of government and ability, we know this: How to handle comments is often their top issue, worry, and fear. Lately, the discussion and media coverage of The Problem That Dare Not Speak Its Name is increasing.

"Behold the Commentocracy, where big ideas and rough remarks sit shoulder to shoulder, altogether transforming the nature of the Web and of journalism," exclaims this important piece in Politico.

We have written before about our ambivalence concerning blog commenting. Andrew Keen, the brilliant if sometimes over-the-top skeptic of the current Age of Web 2.0, and several others, have recently written angry but engaging books bemoaning the unstoppable river of anonymous bile drowning whole corners of the Web. We love skeptics, so we listen, we learn, and we are certainly entertained -- especially by Keen.

The Politico piece includes comments from top bloggers on how this issue is frustrating them as well, including this from Ken Layne, of Wonkette:

“Nobody would tolerate if, at the end of 'Meet the Press,' if a bunch of weirdos stormed the studio and started screaming weird racist stuff,” he says. “They’d call the police.”

Those in government who risk blogging are doubling their risk by inviting comments, unless they monitor them closely, and then soon we will have this question: If your blog is public record, isn't my comment to your blog also public record? If so, why did you not publish it? Any person or persons who spend their lives thinking such thoughts seem to also have extraordinary abilities at finding very determined lawyers, for some reason.

When we find a blog or mainstream media article that includes great reader comments, we find ourselves reading every single one. It can be enveloping. So many insights and so much thoughtful stuff. But the loony, raging, juvenile ranting out there that passes for "comments" is pervasive and a real problem. And it is a bigger problem for those in government.

One public sector blogger interviewed here a few days ago has useful thoughts on this. We will follow this because the answer is elusive.

Typepad on better blogging for the rest of us

We find tips for better blogging all over the Internet. We like this set from Typepad because it seems to be aimed at the vast army of bloggers out there, not just at the experts. We are compiling the best ones we find in our category cleverly titled "Blogging Tips." Check it out.

Posterous: The next hot blog platform

Posterous is extremely simple. Just send an email, and there you go: Your blog exists, and it looks great. Just like that. We will see what the other major commercial blog services will do in reply, if anything.

This also means of course that there are fewer and fewer excuses for not trying blogging. Here is Poynter Online's eMedia Tidbits blog with further explanation. TechCrunch declares Posterous "might be the simplest blog platform to date." Also: It's free.

More on why corporate blogs fail

Among the valuable comments here following the Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog post on the recent Forrester report on the sorry state of business-to-business blogging:

• I maintain and manage what I’ll call a “pr dispersal site” for a Fortune 500 company, and all efforts to “spice it up” with engaging content and an honest voice have been met with shrieks of terror from PR, marketing, corporate HQ, and the vast sea of go-betweens.
• ... A blog isn’t a pulpit, it’s a conversation. B2B marketers need to step back, understand this newer medium, and craft new strategies for successful implementation. Applying strategies from other media to the blog is like trying to induce a car to go using a buggy whip.
• Successful blogs have three things in common. 1) Personality. 2) They offer information that is valuable and/or entertaining to readers. 3) Time and resources are invested; Postings are not an afterthought. Most corporate blogs have none of the above. Like anything else, you get what you put into it.
• Most corporate blogs are strangled at birth by having to go through the legal department post by post.

Or, there is another explanation, however painful. And that is that blogging for the most part is a Gen. X/Y thing, and as long as the Boomers and their previous-century business practices remain in place, blogs will not have any real impact on how corporations -- and the public sector -- do business.

This site offers plenty of useful blog tips for everybody

A site called ProBlogger is a great place to learn about blogging. Plenty of very readable, useful stuff. Scroll down to the "Best of" section.

Here is an extensive list of blogging tips for beginners.

Here is a good piece on generating blog comments.

And here is something on the confusing world of TrackBacks.

Navy CIO blog needs to be updated more often

A good blog here from the Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer. But a decently-written mini essay once a month does not an effective blog make. Blogs work best when their publishers understand they are conversation starters, contributors, and inciters. Get the ball rolling, and keep it rolling. When it stops, you often lose your audience community.

By the way: Is anybody at the Pentagon, or anywhere else, blogging about this?

Somebody should be.

Audio blogging could be good match for public sector bloggers

John Stevens, a quality blogger and public school board member in Loudoun County, Virginia, has added audio posts to his blog. We asked how it is working out:

I've done two audio posts so far, the first on June 6 and another this past Friday, June 13. I'll definitely keep doing it, but I need to be sure that I don't over-use it like a new toy or come to depend on it as a crutch, because there are definite drawbacks to it as well as great advantages.

I decided to give it a try for the same reasons that I started blogging to begin with ... there were times when I felt I had something to share and needed a good way to do it, and I want constituents to get to know me better. Sometimes due to time constraints or limitations of the medium, typing a blog entry just isn't a good option.

I used Hipcast after first trying Gabcast. Gabcast is a free service but after about three days of trying I couldn't get it to post to my blog. Hipcast does have a cost but works very well, though it does have limitations. It's a very new service and I expect that it will become more useful over time.

There are several possible ways to post but the easiest, and the only one I have used so far, is by phone. Call a number, punch in a PIN, speak. It's also possible to upload MP3s and record directly to the website via a PC microphone.

Stevens, one blogger whose commenters tend to contribute useful stuff to the proceedings, adds that they have pointed out some drawbacks to audio, such as search limitations for a non-text post, and one suggestion that "audio is inappropriate for the work setting."

We say: Buy some earbuds, pal. The options, potential, and value here are tremendous. We can see John doing a fast phone conversation with someone on a school issue, and quickly posting the result in minutes.

Another commenter suggested that John's school district could have used audio blogging to great use during a recent storm, where some students were kept after school, and though a recorded phone message system was activated, the district's Web sites were never updated. 

Blog comments worth reading

Following up our post here on idiot blog comments: It is always enjoyable to find a blog anywhere, written by a grown-up, with a string of readable, interesting comments. The Travel Log, a blog by travel writers at the Washington Post, is just such a blog. Here is one example. How many blogs do you come to where you want to read every single comment? For us, almost zero. Most of the time, after pushing through a few, we have had enough. Travel Log is a great blog. Its readers have good stories to tell and love to tell them. Also: Viva group blogs!

Idiot comments drive away potential bloggers

We all know that across some areas of the Web, too many commenters are angry partisans, who feel licensed to misbehave on too many blogs all day long just for fun. The problem: This can discourage many, especially in government, from giving blogging a try. Certainly those in government. And that's a loss.

I read blogs from all over the ideological map. One I check regularly is by Ben Smith, who blogs about the Obama campaign at Politico. Very good stuff. Politico, based on Capitol Hill, is a must read. Apparently the vast majority of commenters are young, angry, sarcastic, and of course: anonymous.

We note this while reading Smith's post describing video of Obama filling sandbags this weekend in a flood area of Illinois, " ... a moment his campaign was careful to avoid over-hyping as a photo-op, which it inevitably was," Smith wrote.

Obama rumors site has lessons for all public figures

The Barack Obama campaign has published a Web site aimed at dispelling rumors about the candidate: That he is Muslim, that his wife hates whites, that he in fact arrived as a baby from the planet Zoltar and brought terror to a small Kansas town by shooting flames from his eyes, etc. That last one came from Drudge, I think, but my memory is not what it used to be. Reuters has the details. NPR here.

The site, by effectively pointing to the obvious silliness of these rumors, paints his opponents as clowns, and becomes a way for Obama go to on offense, while looking like he is on defense. Municipalist focuses on blogging in government, and as we have predicted here, public figures will increasingly head to the Web when the heat hits. The Web is an efficient, cheap, and useful means of accomplishing not only the dirty work of smearing those we oppose, but clearing those we like. Including ourselves. Also: It is interesting that the Obama campaign decided this was the best way to go, instead of relying on the blogosphere at large, and the many pro-Obama blogs out there, to do it for him.

This also points to the utility of public figures learning to blog long before the heat hits. Obviously a major presidential campaign is going to have armies of bloggers and developers ready at a moment's notice. But for the smaller fries out there, from Congress to school board, learning to blog long before you decide you need to is important, we say. Get good at this long before it becomes the last-minute means to save your desperate ass. Learn to do it now, and your career may thank you some day.

Ben Smith of Politico has good analysis.

Of course, what Obama really needs is a site that defends, explains, and dances around the stuff he is facing this week that is, in fact, all too true.

Update: Ben Smith links back.

RSS vs. email: The lowdown

RSS wins. Here is one reason:

Maintain a cleaner inbox environment. It is good Feng Shui: “A cluttered room, a cluttered destiny.”

From practical-strategy.com.

Blogs vs. message boards: The lowdown

All new bloggers especially, add this one to your files: Detailed, long post with a good side-by-side chart comparing blogs to message boards. Big confusion continues out there on this.

From commoncraft.com.

A way through the jargon forest

Mike Sansone's Blog and Social Media Glossary is such a useful tool. Bookmark it. Now I just hope I don't get dooced.

Flash: Homeland Security blog builds readership on important issues. Emily Gould gets new tattoo. Blog at 11

Homeland Security's blog called Leadership Journal is gaining traction and comments in a hurry. The post from May 14 (319 comments so far) entitled "We're Listening" is a follow-up to this post from March 20 (275 comments) which took on the New York Times. A dialogue is happening here. This is a long way from the World of Emily Gould, eh?

Questions to ask before your first blog post

The blog from the National Conference of State Legislatures asks those in government considering jumping into Web 2.0: Is social media right for you?

Brian Wheeler has tips for school board bloggers

School board blogger Brian Wheeler, who co-presented with me and Jennifer Abel at National School Boards Association's annual conference in Orlando on Saturday, posted a PDF of his session hand-out. Lots of good information. Check it out. And email it to your pals, especially if they are school board members. Or ANY public official. [Jennifer Abel's review of the session itself is here.]

And here is a list of 10 tips for public sector bloggers that I put together from my work here at Municipalist.

Brian also includes a link to a useful primer on RSS, the technology that allows you to "subscribe" to blogs, which can then be aggregated on sites such as Bloglines, saving you from having to visit each and every blog individually. [The primer is by Waldo Jaquith, a blogger and Web innovator profiled recently on Municipalist.]

Airport bloggers beware

Blogging from an airport? Coffee shop? Be safe about it, reports Business Week:

A survey of 14 airports in the U.S. and three in Asia by AirTight Networks, a company that sells gear to make wireless connections more secure, found that 57% of the networks were wide open. These included both networks for public and private systems used for airport functions such as baggage handling and ticketing. An additional 28% of the networks were protected by WEP, while only 15% used a stronger form of security, called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).

One of the more dangerous online activities at the airport: Opening and sending Web-based email.

Here is a good Business Week podcast about this. Very much worth a listen.

A legal guide for bloggers

The Citizen Media Law Project has created a legal guide for anyone who puts content online. This is all new territory, legally and otherwise. So this type of serious effort is very valuable to public sector bloggers.

CMLP also provides a valuable set of comparisons of the major blog-hosting services. Check it out. Their resources page offers plenty of interesting stuff to bloggers.

Commenting Issues, Vol. II

Brian Wheeler, a blogging school board member in Albemarle County, Virginia, is fearless. He has worked hard to open the process of his work as a board member to his community. His blog is here. And he regularly -- and patiently -- engages his blog's commenters too. Check out this example, [referenced in the Municipalist post immediately below] and scroll down a bit. Those commenters are passionate, to say the least. How to handle commenting is such a concern for many new bloggers, especially those in the public eye. Brian simply jumps right in and engages his commenters directly, showing that the commenting feature can be valuable, and should not be feared.

John Stevens, another school board member and blogger profiled here previously, does not just blog, he like Wheeler replies to his commenters directly. Check out an illustration of this here, where Stevens engages some critics on his school district's budget process, on another blog, in some detail (see comment #8).

Reading these two public sector bloggers is like attending a clinic on how public officials can really make this all work. One post and one comment reply at a time.

For those of you keeping score, Commenting Issues Vol. I was published here.

Three new options make live streaming video simple

Can you think of plenty of public sector applications for streaming live video across the Web? Especially when it is this easy? Ustream.tv has been busy doing great work connecting military families. Post I.T. blog has the lowdown on another way to use Ustream:

It's also been used as a way for companies to calm down angry customers. An example of that happened Wednesday night, [co-founder] John [Ham] told me. When Digg, the site that rates articles based on their popularity, made changes to the way content is ranked, angry Diggers took to Ustream to express their disappointment. Once [Digg] founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson heard about the rebellion, they tuned into the live broadcast and started a conversation with their users. Kevin and Jay explained the reasons behind the Web site changes, averting a strike by some of its most devoted users.

And one more Ustream show on the way: David McCullough live teaching some history on Feb. 13. Also: Here is Post I.T. on Seesmic, another video network, called the "Twitter" of social media. And here is PC World Canada on OoVoo, an inexpensive video conferencing tool that for now is free.

Get a blog: Loudoun County, Virginia real estate assessor's office

The category here at Municipalist called Get a blog! offers yet another sad story: The property assessor in Loudoun County, Virginia feels heat from a local blogger, who blogs about real estate. The assessor returns the heat to that blogger, threatens, honks, blows smoke, demands the blog pull the offending post, etc. Another Virginia blogger, who has been following the whole thing, analyzes thus:

While it's refreshing that the Loudoun County Government is now reading blogs, perhaps it's time to counter with a raft of more accessible, online information to counter this issue. Rather than simply direct inquiring minds to a single loudoun.gov website link, why not open a more direct and informative conversation with the online public through an online government blog or forum? It can be mediated, and with relevant social media 2.0 skills, can be a very effective way to engage the public on public property, vs. private.

She's speakin' our language! She's singin' our song! She's walkin' down our sidewalk, turnin' our corner, and mowin' our lawn!

You get the point.

Welcome to the Twittersphere: 'Microblogging' on the go gains fans

This piece I wrote recently for the Washington Post detailing how the Twitter community joined together to not only support one woman's cancer fight, but also to put their money where their tweets are, came along as I was just beginning to pay more attention to this relatively new and at times addictive social media tool.

Presidential candidates as well as even a few public sector bloggers -- the focus of this blog -- are exploring the suddenly popular "micro blogging" site. Think of Twitter as the missing link between instant messaging and blogging. And possibly the application that could, among other public services, kill the dreaded "blast email." Twitter offers space for users to send very brief text updates or "tweets" to anyone you allow to view them, through cell phone, instant message, or on the Web. One hard and fast rule: All posts are limited to 140 characters. Many users don't use half as many. Twitter has taken some hits lately, including this week, but it is gaining fans and influence.

One example: The murder of Benazir Bhutto. A Pakistani blogger who has been getting some attention around the world called Teeth Maestro makes use of Twitter here. Many people found out through Twitter about the collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis. Apparently some of those stuck on the bridge were 'tweeting' the details of what they experienced. For a look at a Twitter news headline group, go here.

John Stevens, a school board member who blogs and who was profiled by Municipalist recently, is investigating Twitter.

"I've been tinkering with it since election day when I saw Vincent Harris at TooConservative demonstrate a public-interest use for it," says Stevens. TooConservative is a blog that covers Virginia state politics, as well as lately the presidential campaign, and had made use of Twitter to file extensive election-day updates.

Why blog: Thought leadership

Perusing the site of the host of this blog, Typepad, I came across this list of eight answers to the question: Why blog? Among Typepad's suggestions:

A blog allows you to develop a position of thought leadership. A blog is a content platform that allows you to fashion a consistent message over time to demonstrate thought leadership in a particular field. This is tremendously valuable for independent professionals and businesses that are focusing on a particular market. A blog sends an implicit message of transparency and accountability, and builds trust in customers, partners, and potential clients.

Thought leadership: Perfect phrase for many public officials to think about, when perusing their work. The value of blogging isn't just what happens today, but what happens over time, how ideas and perceptions can be changes.

Boiler plate? Maybe for the power bloggers and new media futurists out there who have lived with this stuff day and night for years. This blog, on the other hand, is aimed at those in the public sector who are either new to blogging or are considering getting started. So because of likely the most underrated and ignored features of blogs, the category list over there on the right, important information for that growing group can be easily accessed any time. One of the categories here Municipalist is most interested in building is 'Blogging Tips.' Important stuff for the rest of us. No boilerplate allowed.

Ron Paul's example for all public sector bloggers

Presidential candidate, all-around gadfly and "libertarian conservative" Ron Paul has been revealed to be a rather conventional kind of bigot and paranoid jerk, through the unveiling of his past newsletters by The New Republic magazine here in Washington.

Paul's thug supporters are livid. (And they act out, often.) But the lesson for public sector and especially elected bloggers: If what you write (or at least authorize) in paper newsletters with your name on them over the last 30 years can be dug up and dusted off by determined journalists, consider the stunning difference in the Internet age. Your blog, my elected friend, is not only everlasting but infinitely easier to access for the online journalist -- or a future campaign opponent. For years. Forever. Instantly.

Never fear. But take heed. [And the White House is learning a similar lesson.]

More reaction here and here.

Evangelize your blog

Author, venture capitalist, and former Apple Computer "chief evangelist" Guy Kawasaki offers great tips about getting your blog read. Among them:

Scoop stuff. There's a very interesting honor system in blogging. Suppose Blogger A finds an obscure article and posts it to his blog. Blogger B reads about it on Blogger A's blog and links to it. However Blogger B doesn't link only to the article; she also links to Blogger A to give him credit for finding the article.

This means that if you hustle and scoop stuff, other bloggers will link to you. For example, when I found and publicized the Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, many other bloggers linked to my blog, not just the article itself. I was surprised by this. Bottom line: if you want lots of people to link to you, read voraciously and find cool stuff first. As a Japanese philosopher once said, "Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant."

Such an engaging image! Municipalist used to read this guy wayyy back in the early '90s in MacWorld and MacUser. His blog is worth subscribing to.

Elected bloggers: How to overcome the fear?

This is from the first post to Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen's blog, begun in May 2005 with quite a bit of media attention:

I don’t know if this will work. The relative informality and immediacy that makes blogs interesting are at odds with the circumspection and care that a responsible office requires and without which you get your feet tangled up real quick. I’m going to try it for a while, but if it is dull or if the political cost is too great I may need to close up shop at some point in the future. It is really worth giving it a try though.

Well, Gov, you said a mouthfull. The sentence in bold is key. Municipalist also likes " ... or if the political cost is too great ..." Apparently, it is.

As of today, 30 months after it began, total posts to the Phil Blog: seven. The last post of any substance: October 2005. The two posts in 2007 are "remarks" from Bredesen appearances. There is no direct link to the blog anywhere on the governor's Web site, at least none that I could find. What happened?

What he wrote in that first post offers one big clue: Bredesen right away points to the tension between informality/immediacy and circumspection/care. Someone with that much insight and understanding -- of at least one key aspect of what the medium is all about -- you would think would end up being a very good blogger. Maybe it is less than realistic to expect that a governor, of all people, could do this, with any regularity or rhythm or substance beyond the superficial. But this guy nailed one big issue: The fear was present from day one.