State department launches blog.

• Position: Website overview

According to State Department spokesman Sean McCormick, who opened the blog with its first post, Dipnote's purposes are to:

1. "Start a dialog with the public;"

2. Open a "window into the work of the people responsible for our foreign policy;"

3. Give web surfers "a chance to be active participants in a community focused on some of the great issues of our world today;" and

4. Take participants "behind the scenes at the State Department and bring [them] closer to the personalities of the Department."

   McCormick has encouraged officials at all levels to post items about their personal experiences in conducting foreign policy, according to an Associated Press story about the new blog.

   The AP reported that Department spokesman McCormack came up with the idea for a State blog and won Secretary Rice's blessing for it as the latest in a series of innovations designed to bring the Department into the mainstream of current information technology. The story quotes Foreign Service Officer Frederick Jones, who is the Dipnote editor, as saying, "The challenge we face is striking a balance between having informed and interesting comment and giving diplomacy the space it needs. Diplomacy is not transparent by nature. Blogs are."

   Dipnote offerings during its first few days of operation have included:

1. An interview with a Diplomatic Security officer on protecting VIPs in New York for the UN General Assembly (UNGA)

2. A report on meetings with foreign leaders who are in New York for UNGA by President Bush and Secretary Rice

3. Preview of a planned announcement on creation of a panel to review operations by Blackwater and other security contractors

4. A U.S. delegate's notes on her day's activities at UNGA

5. Thoughts on Darfur by a Department official on the way there for a visit

6. Comments on passport issuance progress by the Consular Affairs Bureau spokesman

   Following is one of the early postings on Dipnote, from Noel Clay, a press officer in the public affairs section of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad:

   Morning started today for me like many other mornings in middle "Mesopotamia." I rise and shine at 7 a.m., even though work in the Public Affairs Section of Embassy Baghdad doesn't officially start until 9 a.m., and in spite of living just a couple hundred yards from my office. Had yet another restless night of sleep due to the drone of helicopters flying overhead all night. After making myself presentable, I begin my walk to work from my half of a yellow trailer (yes...