Hey, John, do you wanna exchange links??
Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain has launched a blog. But it’s in its infancy stage:
He still hasn’t ended a post with “heh” yet.
But he has linked to Daily Kos. (HEY, what is TMV, chopped liver?)
And his web design crew has picked a cool title: “The McCain Report: A Blog You Can Believe In.”
A blog you can believe in? But wouldn’t that be THIS BLOG?
The Nation reports:
John McCain’s campaign launched a spiffy new blog on Friday, stepping up an effort to catch up to Barack Obama’s web dominance. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds sent reporters a statement hitting several Internet priorities.
(We assume THIS Tucker doesn’t wear a bow tie…)
The blog will offer a fresh perspective and will include quotes, the candidate’s schedule and photos not available anywhere else. As a part of our continual effort to reach voters, allow unprecedented access and bring greater transparency to American politics, our blog ‘The McCain Report’ will provide a sounding board for all.
The first two posts are cheeky. Michael Goldfarb, a campaign blogger and former Weekly Standard reporter, tells readers the blog almost sported a lime-green decor, and tweaks Obama for being “so changey.” (Is “changey” the new flip-flop? I hope not.) The McCain campaign has always trailed Obama in online campaigning, lagging in fundraising, social networking, list-building and YouTube outreach, but it has repeatedly tried to engage the Internet community on its own terms. Conservative bloggers talk directly with the candidate via regular conference calls, which is more access than any Democratic candidate ever provided the (larger) liberal blogosphere. The McCain campaign’s official sites are also open to commentators of all stripes, providing a more open dialogue than Hillary Clinton’s websites, as The Nation documented in March.
McCain is even leaning left online. Right now the campaign homepage features a prominent banner directing supporters to visit Daily Kos, the powerhouse liberal blog, to engage voters.
It is a smart idea. Of course, the question remains whether a political blog can really be a blog since it’s so closely tied to a political candidate.
Few real blogs are tied to candidates… (OOPS! Never mind..)
McCain’s new blog is most assuredly a positive sign.
It shows that McCain is conscious that 2008 is firmly enmeshed in the infancy of the 21st century’s new info-revolution and just relying on friendly blogs, standard websites, mailings and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to get the party’s message out to the faithful won’t do anymore.
And, indeed, there has been a major upgrade in how politicians and corporations view blogs — and their authentic understanding of them in terms of content and timeliness.
Four years ago most political party blogs or newspaper blogs were blogs in name only. Someone somewhere thought “If we can set up a blog and say it’s a blog we’ll get all of this great traffic and promote our brand!”
But many of these early efforts were tepid.
Just setting up a blog with a name doesn’t ensure success (unless the blog is named “BANNED PORN HERE!”).
Today, many newspapers have blogs that are as good as — and in many cases better — than traditional, privately-set-up blogs. Big newspapers and news-magazines have truly caught onto the blogging style, package their info in a blog format, and keep it updated constantly. Plus, they have writers who can really write and who actually have fun doing it, rather than perpetually outraged and angry writers as so many blogs seemingly have.
So, John, we look forward to reading your blog — and see you’ve already had a post from your new blog register on the bloggers’ indispensable tool, Memeorandum.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.