Dear Secretary Chertoff,
You’ve created a blog. Good for you. Nice job making a move to enter the conversation.
But I don’t think you are the one writing the blog.
If I were you, I would heed the advice of National Journal’s Danny Glover:
Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine think it’s a bad idea for politicians to try to adopt in the blogosphere the same “false voice” they have employed in ghost-written columns and press releases for generations.
I agree. This is a new media era, Washington. Your readers expect you to behave differently than you do in old media, and you only irritate us when you send your flacks into the blogosphere on your behalf.
Bottom line — it sounds like your public affairs shop is writing your posts. Don’t claim you are writing them if you are not. I’d love for you to prove me wrong and say that you are indeed writing the posts.
But I doubt it.
I think having your press folks write the blog in your name is why I think your blog doesn’t work — and why the State Department’s DipNote does.
Steve
Great post, Steve. I agree. It’s great that DHS has a blog — but transparency, esp in that particular agency, is so important! Thanks for keeping us informed of what’s going on in the governmental PR sector!
One of the first forays into the blogosphere by a cabinet level official was by Director John P. Walters, also known as the Drug Czar in 2005. It has since become more of a forum for the Drug Policy Office but he did make one of the first attempts to enter this newest “conversation”.
[...] for some type of social network or text message campaign. It makes more sense than say, creating a blog supposedly written by Michael [...]