Congress Blog is published by The Hill, a must-read Washington, D.C. newspaper that, oddly enough, covers Capitol Hill. The concept is simple: Congress Blog is a group blog, with members of Congress themselves providing much of the content. Any member can post, and all member posts must be 'unique' or Congress Blog must at least get it first, says Andy Barr, who runs Congress Blog with co-editor Chris Good.
The reason this all matters is even though only a few members of Congress publish their own blogs, more are finding ways to instead make use of already established blogs run by others, either by posting directly or by coming up with more elaborate plans, as Municipalist noted recently.
Two interns add assistance to Congress Blog, and The Hill's Web Editor Klaus Marre (who used to work on the blog) helps out as well. Barr answered Municipalist's questions:
What is the history of Congress Blog?
The blog started in May '06 when David Mikhail (who has since left The Hill) was the only member of the staff working on the blog. Since then it has slowly grown in staff, [as have] the number of posts we get and the quality of the posts. The blog is constantly changing and evolving and has gone from a blog just where lawmakers would issue us a quick statement on whatever we could get, to a blog that often gets immediate reactions from members of Congress to what is going on on Capitol Hill, whether it was immediate reactions to the Petraeus hearings or Republicans voicing their frustration with Democrats the day Democrats dropped the SCHIP bill on them only a few hours before the vote.
We have also been doing more and more with video for the blog, both with video posts from members and interviews with lobbyists and other hooked-in people so that people can get a better appreciation for what is going on behind the scenes.
Any member can submit to us on any topic. We have few restrictions except that the post must be unique for us. All posts are either unique or we get it first. We have a dozen or so members who will send us something unsolicited, but usually we have to give them a call to ask if they would like to blog on a topic that either they have either unique insight on or took part in the hearing or event. We also have some interest groups and others that post to the blog. We have stricter restrictions for interest group posts. With any big issue we try to get posts from several viewpoints, and interest groups that play a major role in the issue certainly need to be heard from to get the full scope of what is going on.
What are the blog's goals?
The goal of the blog is to provide a less filtered forum for lawmakers and the public to communicate. That is not to say that members of Congress are completely frank on the blog -- they are still politicians -- but they do know that what they send us will be printed in its entirety and your average citizen knows this is actually what their lawmakers said. The blog also provides immediate reaction from lawmakers on hot issues of the day, or any major legislative action. I think it really is an excellent tool for anyone who follows politics closely to see how these guys are reacting to what is going on that day in politics.
How has it worked so far?
The goals of the blog are kind of grand, so obviously there is going to be some let down. Since content-wise we are dependent on members of Congress and not ourselves, control of the blog is somewhat out of our control. That means that some days we have a lot of great content and others days we have less. Obviously we would like to have clear and frank posts from the members who blog, but these guys always have to be careful of what they say, and just because it is a blog where they know we aren't going to pull something out of context and show only that, doesn't mean they are comfortable adopting the same attitude toward blogging that most others do.
Now, we do have members who want to post on something and will call us right after they get out of a hearing or a vote and just kind of shoot from the hip while we write it all down. (Rep. Thaddeus McCotter usually provides hilarious posts whenever he calls one of us to put something up on the blog for him).
Will there ever be a day when the majority of Congress blogs? And will those blogs be readable and engaging?
I would easily say that a large majority of Congress has blogged on our site at one time or another, though most of them have only posted a few times. I think there will be a day when we have a large group of consistent bloggers (as I said before right now we have about a dozen). I think we have the greatest aggregation of lawmakers blogging, but a lot frequently blog on their own sites as well as others. I think there will be a day very soon when most members of Congress are blogging. Your other question is a little more tricky. Whether a post is readable or engaging I think is more a matter of the member we have blogging, and the issue they are blogging on, than it is about whether members of Congress as a whole provide engaging posts.
A lot of the posts we have are thought-provoking, but only if you know a lot about the farm bill or free trade agreements. There is certainly a lot of wonky posts on the blog, but that is a reflection of the members blogging. We also have had a number of controversial posts on issues like torture, the war on terror and many others, but really the blog is a good reflection of what is actually happening on Capitol Hill. This is what these guys are actually talking about among themselves and in hearings on the issues they blog about.
Comments