Mike Madrid, public affairs director of the California League of Cities, speaking about blogging
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Are blogs something that city managers and city politicians should be using to communicate with their constituents? Increasingly the answer is yes – but for many local elected officials and city administrators this is still a thorny issue.
I spoke about blogging yesterday, in San Diego, at a conference of the California League of Cities. The session was moderated by Mike Madrid, the public affairs director of the California League of Cities. The panel included Rick Cole, the City Manager in Ventura. Rick actually is a pioneer in the world of city blogging. Click here to read the article he wrote about yesterday’s session, on his city manager’s blog.
Here is an excerpt from Rick’s post:
If a blog is to be more than a trendy toy, it has to fit into a larger commitment to healthy dialogue that engages citizens, not just in government decision-making, but in real partnership in achieving the community’s future goals and vision. That means community gatherings like our recent Economic Summit, that means face-to-face informal opportunties like our periodic “Taking it to the Streets” neighborhood open houses, that means lively involvement of citizen advisory commissions and task forces like the View Protection Task Force and Citizen Budget Ad Hoc Committee and that means a spirit of mutual respect between elected officials, public servants and the public we all serve.
Rick Cole, Ventura City Manager
The session was packed – and several folks stayed afaterwards to ask more questions. I was honored to be involved in this session and look forward to doing this again in the future.
It is refreshing to meet city folks who really do want to communicate with their residents – unlike the city leaders where I live in Santa Ana…
I think city managers should have the guts to explain themselves on local citizen’s blogs.
The Mission Viejo city manager has challenged one of my Juice posts off line. To offset being hammered by the two local blogs, as well as the Orange Juice coverage of MV, he has hired someone to write a MV blog in an attempt to discredit our coverage.
Unlike the local Register reporter who needs the city access for many local stories, we often beat them to the story and do not run it by staff to get their “spin”
To maintain and expand our blogger credibility and readership we do our best to be as factual as possible.
As the city does not have a club to use over our heads, such as paid legal notices, they cannot control or influence our local coverage.
To the question of this story.
I wonder if a city manager would put on a hard hat and enter the kitchen when Juice readers can hammer away by signing in anonymously and taking them to task as happens to each of us almost every day.
Further, the city managers could cover his or her own story with anonymous comments of their own to create supporting “spin” when being challenged by readers.