20-20 vision online

Posted at 12:56 PM on April 20, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

It's not Rathergate by a longshot but the blog MNPublius showed why the world of blogging provides a watchdog that is pretty keen of eye. MNPublius posted yesterday that the Mark Kennedy congressional Web site (not to be confused with the campaign) posted a press release with an April 19 date advising constituents of online tax preparation services. Of course, the deadline for filing taxes was April 17.

It was a posting not unlike some of the partisan shots that political sites take at philosophical opposites.

But today he reports that the release is still online, but the date now reads April 11, or 6 days before the deadline.

Thing is: he saved the screen shot of the original.

In all fairness, however, a couple of things: nobody in the press actually pays any attention to these sorts of press releases. Second, it depends on what content management system Congress uses for its Web site and when the Web person posts them. Was it the same day they were mailed out or, more likely, faxed? Is it a database? A template? A lot of Web sites are archives and stuff often gets into the archives several days later.

Since nobody knows for sure, one can't really ascribe a sinister motive here, but it is a reminder than the bloggers are always watching.

Also a good reminder that the "strike" command is a much better editing tool for online material than a 'delete' command.

Comments (1)

Also not Rathergate, but I noticed something similar on John Kline's congressional site just last night.

On February 3, Kline sent out an email praising new House majority leader John Boehner as "a breath of fresh air for a chamber in need of reform". Kline felt so strongly about this, he emphasized it in bold typeface. This email was an edition of 'Kline's Corner', a quasi-regular email to constituents who have signed up to receive it.

When Kline redesigned his congressional website last month, he put up archives for Kline's Corner, going back through January 1 of this year. The Boehner letter was included, and I made point of linking to it on my site.

Last night I noticed that the Boehner letter has been removed from the archives, and the link I have no longer works.

Does this mean that Kline has reconsidered his high praise for Boehner? Or does it simply mean that his site is set up to retire old issues of Kline's Corner after a set period of time (like 2 months?). If the latter explanation holds, it seems to defeat the point of setting up an archive in the first place.

Posted by David Bailey | April 20, 2006 1:21 PM

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