Gubernatorial Campaigns Don’t Quite Get Blogs

I usually grab a free copy of the The Boston Herald before taking the commuter rail back home after work. So, i tend to catch “The Monday Morning Briefing” in the evening. I am curious what the folks at the Boston Herald are checking out in the blogosphere… This week, it wasn’t bloggers, it was the gubernatorial campaigns…

Gubernatorial candidates boast their entrees into the blogosphere, but they apparently still don’t understand what a blog is. While the Tom Reilly camp has filled his with press releases, Deval Patrick’s video entries look like television ads. And Christy Mihos seems to have given up altogether after one post. Maybe Kerry Healey and Chris Gabrieli have the right idea: leave the blogging to, well, the bloggers.

It does seem like the candidates still haven’t quite figured it out. Granted, the Deval Patrick campaign is one giant leap ahead of the rest. Whether or not the campaigns will refocus their online strategies closer to the primary, or afterwards, who knows… but they should all realize that blogging isn’t just for national campaigns and political activists. Jon Corzine had a blog during his successful campaign for governor of New Jersey, and even hired an actually blogger to run it.

But one thing that was missed is that Kerry Healey does have something meant to resemble a blog. Her “Press Room” has an RSS feed and the feed is titled “Kerry Healey’s Weblog.” I’ll be the first to say this does not qualify as a blog, but I’d like to believe this is giving us a small glimpse in the Healey campaign’s future plans to make a more genuine entrance into the blogosphere.

Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.

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