Update [2007-9-12 23:52:54 by psericks]: Election Geek posted a response to this post over at TechPresident, you can read it here.

Part of the candidate blogger series for Obama

I wanted to write about something a little different today and hopefully spark a broader discussion about candidate websites.  Jeff Commaroto, aka Election Geek, wrote a post a couple weeks ago for Techpresident.com criticizing candidate blogs and specifically the hiring of external bloggers for campaign websites.  

The problem with campaign bloggers, according to Election Geek, is inherent in their very nature.  They are paid to recycle campaign talking points and gush about the campaign.  They lack a certain spontaneity.  Blog posts are most likely approved or amended by the candidate or staff before being posted.  There is never a word of criticism for the candidate, never any pressure applied.

The problem with these blogs isn't entirely the fault of the bloggers but the premise, which is you take a bunch of people and have them write positively about a campaign. There is no excitement there, no room to grow, no running dialogue other than, candidate is good, candidate is good, candidate is good, vote.

Election Geek is clearly identifying a central tension.  His issue with campaign blogs goes straight to the nature of blogging.  Campaign bloggers are forced to act as surrogates, as filters and purveyors of information, instead of as, well, themselves.  

And there is a clear truth to Election Geek's point that candidate blog entries all tend to follow a certain formula:

I [saw, witnessed, was with] CANDIDATE in [Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina] and it was an [amazing, awe-inspiring, wonderful] time. My [pictures, videos, text messages] are here.

I was particularly struck when CANDIDATE discussed [health care, tort reform, flat tax, abortion, guns, labor unions, lobbying] and made an amazing point. There was a [man, woman] there with an amazingly personal story and I will always remember them. I am so grateful that I am part of this campaign and hope that when CANDIDATE wins and becomes President in 2009 they will follow-up on this issue.

Much better, according to Election Geek, would simply be a return to the old way of doing things, when a speech writer, veiled as the candidate, would write posts that at least had the benefit of the illusion of speaking to us directly and personally.  This is, of course, how campaign emails are usually packaged.

A number of other bloggers, including Matt Ortega and Mike Connery, have expressed sympathy for the point.

So what are campaign blogs for?  Can bloggers be committed to a candidate and still write compelling, thoughtful posts that can command attention?  Does connection to the campaign rob them of their independence and integrity?  By extension, what about candidate bloggers on MyDD?  And what about the new move towards campaign websites hosting supporter blogs?  Are these blogs just preaching to the choir?  Can they be compelling?  Are they useful in sponsoring interaction and bringing supporters together?  These questions partly tie back to David Mizner's post last week about blogger reluctance to openly endorse in the primary.

I partly disagree with Election Geek because I know bloggers who are impassioned and intensely committed to a candidate and who write great posts.  Sagereader, over at Think on These Things, served as a role model for getting me interested in blogging in the first place.  And the official Obama blog, while occasionally slipping into the formula above, keeps bringing me back.  Sam Graham-Felsen, for his part, isn't an anonymous staffer but a great writer whose own personality shines through in his posts.  

It depends on the role you envision for a candidate blog.  The blog should make you feel engaged in the campaign.  It can inspire you and give you new energy.  It can remind you why you support a certain candidate in the first place.  It can serve as a forum for letting supporters know what others are working on in different parts of the country.  It condenses information from various news feeds in one place, pulls together disparate links and obscure or local newspaper articles.  

These aren't necessarily things that an engaged political reader would need or be interested in, but it certainly serves a role for the general public and for supporters who do in fact want to know the rally went really great on Sunday and about that person in the crowd who was there and who told an incredibly personal story that you will never forget.

In many ways, the Obama campaign is an anomaly among the presidential campaigns, because it doesn't actually have just one official blog.  Rather there are various "communities" on the site (like Women for Obama, Generation Obama, Students for Barack Obama), each having their own official blog.  Further, each of the early primary states has its own community page also staffed with official bloggers.  So there is a vast amount of material being produced.

The best point that was made in the discussion on Techpresident after the article was that candidate blogs should be more about interaction than they are.  If there is a comments section on candidate blogs at all, it most often goes unread --- or equally important, it doesn't convey the impression that it is read.  There might be opportunities to respond, but not with any level of visibility.

Part of this gets at my problems with the Obama campaign website.  Although they literally have had supporters set up thousands of blogs, many for the first time, and my own first blog was on my.barackobama.com, the blog entries don't have any level of visibility.  There isn't a recommended list.  Blog entries aren't posted to a central location (although there is one if you know how to find it) so much as to the groups of which you are a part, such that to find other people's entries you have to search out the webpage of each group.  The emphasis is on local group members being able to communicate with each other rather than on fostering discussion nationwide.

The Edwards website doesn't have supporter blogs on the home page either, but what it does have is a blog page with both the official candidate blog and then a number of list with interesting metrics like: Most read posts (w/ number of hits), Most comments, Recommend list, Newest, etc.

The Obama website gives you, along with the lack of a blog roll on the website, the impression that the campaign hesitates slightly at putting independent voices in the public eye.  This is perfectly understandable, but it does a lot to deflate the discussion.  Blog entries seem to be isolated bursts, without easy connection to one another and usually drawing few comments.  You don't have the impression that your posts are being read.  Most crucially, it doesn't leave you with the impression that you are part of a lively and active community.

I went through a phase of spending hours of my time subscribing to the RSS feed for new blog entries, going down the list, and responding with encouraging comments.

I think the campaign knows about the problem and seems to be trying to come up with creative ways to address it.  Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook and now on the Obama staff, recently announced a point system.

Today we're unrolling a new way to measure your impact on the campaign: points in the My.BarackObama network.  Just about every action you can take on My.BarackObama now will give you points to make it easier to see all the hard work you're putting in to make this campaign succeed.  If you host an event, that'll show up on your profile and you'll get 20 points.  Write a blog post and you'll get 15.

It's a good idea to recognize hard-working volunteers, but it doesn't solve the structural problem the website has.

The website is phenomenal, the social networking tools are great, and the New Media team has been really imaginative in setting up issue discussion groups such as the one to solicit stories and ideas about health care (as I've written about previously) --- but it still falls short in creating a lively, engaged online community.

MyDD, Open Left, and DailyKos are structured the way they are, with a recommend list, a blogroll, and a list of diaries, because it has worked so well.  There's a lot that could have been copied, a lot of experience that could have been learned from --- as Edwards clearly has with his site.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?  What have your candidates been doing differently?  What works?  Do you read candidate blogs?  Do you write a blog on a candidate-sponsored site?  What works?  What doesn't?  What strikes you as worthwhile?  What's dull?

(By the way, I'm also posting simultaneously a glowing diary about Obama's record on ethics reform that I had intended for the front page.  But I thought this discussion would be more useful here.)