Back in June, Representative Jack Kingston (or someone on his staff) wrote a post on Kingston's official blog describing the "New Media Revolution" taking over Capitol Hill. As proof, they posted links to seven blogs written by Republican House members or their staff and listed the ways that Jack Kingston is a new media revolutionary himself: he has a flickr account, his own podcast (or JackCast), and a "hidden video page for insiders."

Leaving aside for a moment that a "hidden video page for insiders" isn't exactly embracing the open potential of social media, Kingston did seem to be making an honest attempt to figure how to use the Internet, and was excited to see some of his GOP colleagues doing the same.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how those blogs are getting along now, months after Kingston's post. Below follows a list of the blogs Kingston mentioned and their status as of today. Since it's understood that these blogs are usually written by staffers, I'm putting the name of the official for whom they write in parentheses following the name of each blog. Also, it should be noted that none of these blogs is a perfect example of how to be a "new media revolutionary"; Kingston himself wrote that "Most of the blogs below are still missing a few key elements of a blog, but they've still built the 'idea' of a blog in to their communication strategy." Let's see how well these ideas are executed.

The Speaker's Journal (Rep. Dennis Hastert)

He won't be Speaker of the House anymore, so Hastert will have to change the name of this blog or stop it altogether, but that shouldn't matter much; after burst of activity in October and November of 2005, Hastert wrote about one post a month, and there's only been one post since May 26th, and that was made in mid-September.

The site was sort of a blog and sort of a place to post press releases: before the site lost steam almost every post was titled "House Happenings for this Week," which featured Hastert giving a rundown of, you guessed it, the House happenings for the week, giving his take on the issues of the week. Although his posts were long and not very blog-like, it was nice that they were written in Hastert's own voice and took time to deal with his positions on policy.

However, to paraphrase Woody Allen, blogs are like sharks. If they don't keep moving they die. Hastert's blog is a dead shark.

Majority Matters Blog (Rep. John Boehner)

Looks like Boehner will have to change the blog's name. Boehner, who was just elected to House Minority Leader (he was Majority Leader before the mid-terms), kept up a rigorous blogging schedule until October 24th, when he mysteriously stopped posting. His posts were blistering attacks on the Democrats, especially Nancy Pelosi: the last three post titles were "Pelosi Hypocrisy on Intelligence Proves She Just Doesn't Get it"; "A Pelosi Majority Would Weaken Economy, Prompt Higher Gas Prices for American Families"; and (once again) "A Pelosi Majority Would Mean Higher Gas Prices for American Families."

While it's nice that he posted so regularly, he could have benefitted from a softer tone (I wonder how that will serve him now that Pelosi is Speaker). Unlike Hastert, who managed to be a bit congenial in his posts, Boehner didn't quite seem to get that blogging is a social activity, and it's off-putting to maintain such a negative tone.

However, Boehner managed to post much more consistently than Hastert; his shark swam strong until it inexplicably died on October 24th.

GOP.gov Blog (Rep. Deborah Pryce)

This returned a "page not found" page. There is no mention of a blog on Pryce's official House web site.

The Conaway Blog (Rep. Mike Conaway)

This is a real blog. It looks like a blog, with post titles and dates running down the left-hand side of the page, an apparent comments sections (though I didn't didn't see any comments), and it appears to be using WordPress, the popular open-source blogging software. And there are even podcasts!

The posts are written by an anonymous staffer who refers to Conaway in the third person (it's honest, anyway). Most of the posts articulate Conaway's stands on issues or discuss more cultural topics, like the post on Constitution Day, which lamented the fact that "most Americans don't know what the Constitution says."

The last post was made on November 14th, six days ago. I think that qualifies as live.

The Boozman Blog (Rep. John Boozman)

Boozman's blog also is still updated. Unfortunately, it mainly consists of press-release-type posts, with links to articles that mention Boozman and round-ups of news from his district in Arkansas. It ominously skips the month of October (slow month?).

The resulting impression is not of a blog with a voice but of a frigid, Boozman-centric news stream. That the posts are all credited to a "blogger" named Boozman Press Office doesn't help.

RSC Blog (Republican Study Committee/The Caucus of House Conservatives)

This a real multi-author blog, replete with categories, comments, short posts, and more-or-less frequent updates. The authors link to and briefly discuss news from around the web relating to GOP talking pints. Despite the typically wonky subject matter, the blog is refreshing in that its authors understand the form: keep it brief (unlike this post) and link, link, link.

Congressman Kirk's Blog (Rep. Mark Kirk)

This blog is a curious thing; rather than listing posts in reverse-chronological order going down the page, as most blogs are organized, the home page of Kirk's blog features only links to entries, which take you to static pages that are actually pretty good. Kirk goes beyond the talking points and reacts to topical news. And there are features we haven't seen yet... pictures.

The irony of course is that Kirk and his staff clearly get how to write a blog post, but rather than build something that looks like a blog -- there are no comments, archives, or links to other sites -- they've chosen to put up an html page with links to other html pages; the user must click on links to read individual posts rather than just scrolling down the page.

The result is that most people won't recognize this as a blog at all.

In the end, Kingston was right; most of these sites are missing at least a few of the "key elements of a blog," but they are indeed unique glimpses into a select group of politicians' willingness to try out this blogging thing.

Tags: congressional blogging, hastert, Jack Kingston, pelosi

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