How to bring blogging to life: by writing a blog, legislators can keep constituents informed in a new way.

• Author: Kurtz, Karl
• Position: TOOLS OF THE TRADE

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

An increasing number of legislators are finding that a blog is a great way to communicate with constituents. A blog--short for "Web log"--is a personal journal on the Web expressing thoughts, linking to news of interest, relating experiences, or commenting on issues.

To understand the power of blogs, let's compare them to legislators' newsletters:

* What would be called an "article" in a newsletter is called a "post" in a blog. Posts are usually less formal, more conversational and shorter than a typical print article, although this varies with the personal style of the writer.

* Instead of storing up news and comments and publishing them all at the same time in a hard copy newsletter every month or two, legislator-bloggers post their ideas and thoughts online as they occur to them, often daily or even several times a day.

* Constituents receive newsletters weeks after the events that they cover occured. "[Blogs] have the immediacy of talk radio," says Wired magazine's Andrew Sullivan. (Of course, that immediacy can be both good bad, just like talk radio: The heat of the moment can generate comments that bloggers might later regret.)

* Newsletter writers can tell their readers about an interesting article or book that is worth reading; bloggers can include a hyperlink that takes readers directly (and almost instantly) to a reading of interest.

* Unlike a newsletter, a blog has no printing or distribution costs.

* With newsletters, the only feedback a legislator receives occurs when a reader takes the trouble to write a letter or fill out and mail a survey form, or makes a comment to the lawmaker when he runs into him or her in the grocery store. But someone who reads a blog can respond with an online comment immediately. Blogs can include online surveys.

* Just as with a newsletter, bloggers can send their thoughts to a mailing list of constituents who want to receive their blog postings. The blog software will automatically send it to subscribed readers via e-mail or "RSS [Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary] feeds." But blogs can also be read by anyone in the world who has a connection to the Internet.

Intrigued? Here's how to start a blog and some advice about writing for it.

1

SIGN UP WITH A BLOG SERVICE.

The technology of blogging is reasonably easy. A wannabe blogger needs to sign up with any number of services that host blogs and provide the software to do it. Popular blog-hosting software providers...