Over at Red Tory's place I made a comment that Mr. Dion should create his own blog. It was just an off the cuff remark but the more I think about it the more I think it is a good idea.
I will not re-create that comment. If you want to see it just follow the link to RT's place. I make the suggestion at around comment number 50.
Anyway, I believe that the Liberals and Mr. Dion have nothing else to lose in the current political climate. They have reached rock bottom and they have nowhere to go but up. Unfortunately, they are not going to do that any time soon unless they begin to think outside of the box.
It does not take a rocket scientist doing brain surgery to realize that the MSM has written off both the Liberals and Mr. Dion. So they should take a page out of Mr. Harper's book and ignore them until they come around. Mr. Harper has frozen the MSM out and they have kissed his ass for it, so maybe the Liberals should do the same thing.
However, they should do it differently. Instead of trying to keep everything a secret they should be much more candid with Canadians but they should bypass the MSM while doing it.
The internet is still a very under-utilized medium for political messaging. This would be a great opportunity for reaching Canadians directly with the message the Liberals want to propogate without the filter of the MSM.
My idea is it would be a blog, not just another venue for releasing Liberal Party media releases. Allow Mr. Dion to speak candidly about what is going on in the Liberal Party and the Country. Or for that matter if he wants to comment on how the Ottawa Senators are doing then go for it. As well, it must be his blog not some site for his speech writer to write on. Mr. Dion must author all of the blogs. He has proven over and over again that he is a great communicator in writing and I believe if he is given this venue for communicating with Canadians they will see just what kind of a man he is and what kind of a leader he can be. Of course, he would have to be careful but he has to be that anyway.
The blog would not be an alternative to the other ways of communicating with Canadians, such as speeches and such but I believe it would compliment those other methods and it may even cause people to pay closer attention to them.
So, I am going to make a suggestion and take it any way you like. I would encourage any Liberal to lobby the party to allow Mr. Dion loose in the blogsphere. In particular I would ask Jason Cherniak and any other Liberal in the blogsphere who has the ear of Mr. Dion and his people to pass this suggestion along to him.
4 comments:
Dion was very good on Question Period today. His blog would be very interesting, but the Cons would never let him alone.
This is a really interesting idea, perhaps you could try relaying the idea to Garth Turner over at his blog?
I agree that it's a good idea. There are, however, a few problems with it.
1. While blogs can still be considered "cutting-edge," online media still doesn't have the popular reach that MSM does, which means the effort-to-potential ratio may be too high for someone in an important position like Mr. Dion.
2. Mr. Dion would probably be more comfortable presenting his blog in French, but he's been trained / conditioned to release information in both languages simultaneously. It would therefore take much longer for him to write a blogpost than it would for a non-politician -- and timeliness is one of the defining characteristics of a good blog.
3. There's also the matter of establishing Mr. Dion's bona fides. There are at least a dozen users on Facebook claiming to be Stephen Harper, albeit facetiously; Mr. Dion would face the same problem. The only way he'd be able to establish an authentic blog would be to have it posted on the official Liberal Party website -- which leads to one more complication . . .
4. Editing. Mr. Dion has both English- and French-speaking PR people who maintain the party website, and all of them will insist on some form of editorial direction. The main worry they have is that Dion might offend someone, or even worse give his "opposition" ammunition on which they can rhetorically gun him down. Facing these people may make Mr. Dion think twice about the whole blogging experiment.
And therein lies the root of it all. Mr. Dion's troubles are the Liberal Party's troubles. He can't pull the Party out of purgatory alone; individual members have a responsility to help as well.
vw:
1. The novelty of having the Leader of the Opposition writing a blog would be a big draw, particularly if he blogs about stuff the MSM usually does not talk about.
2. Mr. Dion writes both English and French fluently. They are much better than his speech. It is true that it would take him a little more time to write in both but he can make up that time by ignoring the MSM. As I say in my post they are not doing him any favours and Mr. Harper has shown that they react positively when you treat them like crap, so starve the bastards and speak to Canadians directly.
3. Yes, this would be a problem but there should be a way to resolve it. For me the greater danger is some dick-head hacking the blog. Whatever the solution it needs to be separate from the Liberals site. Which brings me to point number four.
4. This must be Mr. Dion's blog. If there is even a hint that someone else has their hand in it the effectiveness of the blog would be completely eliminated. The blog should be a record of Mr. Dion's thoughts and ideas, on any issue or topic he wishes to write about, without interference from the so called communications professionals in his office.
Post a Comment