The Whitehouse is Liveblogging?
Justin Bathon on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 7:59PM The Whitehouse liveblogged the President's event in Florida today. Yeah, not kidding. Liveblogging from the Whitehouse. Not some reporter at the Whitehouse. The Whitehouse itself. The Government. Your Government is liveblogging now. Go ahead. Check it out. The very top link at the Whitehouse.gov site is "The Blog." By the way, it's worth your time to check out this blog post that includes a video getting to know Arne Duncan.
I've been hesitant to say much about the new administration, especially since education wound up on the floor of the Stimulus paring down session. But, talk about fundamental change. Can you even imagine previous presidents using the term liveblog, let along actually doing it on the Whitehouse homepage. Check out George W. Bush's whitehouse page. Check out Clinton's! Wow, we have come a long way.
There is something to be said for this type of leadership for the Obama Administration. And it is leadership. They are the pinnacle governmental entity. What they do is an example for every other governmental entity in the entire U.S. -- including schools. Can't wait to see a those school board meeting liveblogs!
Reader Comments (2)
The White House livep-blogging is cool, but it is also a pretty slick way of controlling the message that goes out. I'm an Obama voter, but things like this make me suspicious because the Bush team was so adept at controlling the message for so long. It just makes me
I'm not sure if that is a good or bad thing. It can certainly be bad, but I can also see the positives in it. The Bush Team controlled the message by selectively releasing information ... i.e. they just wouldn't tell people some stuff and ruled the media with an iron fist. There were few if any press conferences, the press secretary's default position was "can't comment," and they used Fox News basically as a arm of the Whitehouse.
I think the Obama group is trying to control the message in a different way. Still trying to control the message, no doubt, but their tactic is basically to become a media company themselves. They want to speak directly to the American people and avoid the media altogether. It is not that they won't give the media something to write about, but that when the release information they just do it themselves, instead of through a "internal leak that won't be named." Their YouTube channel basically is a TV station, as their videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Anyway, the idea is different. The idea that the Whitehouse wants to be in direct communication with the people rather than filtering stuff through the media is a new idea and I think it is going to have ramifications for schools as the Whitehouse serves as an example of how the government should interact with people. The Whitehouse is basically telling other levels of the government that the way to do it is to publish your own message. I think some schools and administrators were starting to do that anyway with their own blogs and whatnot, but this leadership from the Whitehouse I think will take that to a whole new level where it will become expected behavior that districts have their own media arms.