OLYMPIA – Washington’s newest blogger has street cred and a government salary.
It’s Attorney General Rob McKenna.
Washington’s top lawyer entered the blogosphere Thursday with his maiden post, “Kicking the creeps off MySpace,” on the department’s spanking new blog dealing with consumer protection subjects.
“I never thought I’d be a blogger. This is a bit of a new frontier,” McKenna said by phone from Atlanta where he’s attending a national conference for attorneys general.
McKenna’s five-paragraph riff, which he filed with his BlackBerry, appeared on the “All Consuming” blog launched Wednesday on the attorney general’s government Web site.
The purpose of the blog, he said, is to offer another means of serving up information online, he said.
“Blogging is more interesting to people than press releases. Blogging is more conversational. It is faster and more direct,” he said. “It is attractive to a certain set of Internet users.”
Washington is the second state with such a blog. Missouri started one in February.
“All Consuming” will focus solely on consumer issues. The initial post dealt with protecting against auto thieves.
Readers will find the site contains the regular blog fare of “Categories” and “Recent posts.”
Under the “Blogroll” section are links to state and federal authorities as well as the Web sites of Consumer Reports, the Better Business Bureau and consumer advocate and television personality Herb Weisbaum.
Readers can offer feedback by e-mail but will not have the ability to comment and post directly to the Web site, said Kristin Alexander, the department’s media relations manager and blog administrator. No legal advice will be offered either.
“In the work we do, we have to be careful about what people say,” she said.
If Missouri is any example, Washington’s blog will be well-visited.
Missouri started its blog Feb. 1 and is recording 15,000 page hits a month, according to Travis Ford, consumer education coordinator for Attorney General Jay Nixon.
“I post on any topic that’s useful to consumers,” Ford wrote in an e-mail, citing examples such as dealing with telemarketers and protecting against identity theft.
Unlike Washington, Missouri will put comments online once they are reviewed and “filtered.”
“So far I have only rejected comments that are spam or that are incoherent. The only thing we don’t do is give individual legal advice, which we are forbidden by law from doing,” he said.
What McKenna wrote Thursday is pretty tame as blog posts go, regurgitating morsels of conversation from the conference session about Internet safety.
“The states are focused on persuading MySpace.com to adopt parental approval requirements and develop an age verification system,” he wrote. “Similar demands are likely for other social networking sites.”
McKenna said his amateur blogging is exciting and the staff is already talking of starting a second blog dealing with public records.
This is the “wave of the future,” Alexander said. “It shows an attorney general’s office can be professional and hip at the same time.”
Reporter Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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