Since its launch in May, the LAPD’s blog has gotten its fair share of both criticism and praise. Earlier this year, LA Daily News Columnist Mariel Garza wrote that the blog, “just bogs down the net.”
But now, the LAPD is earning attention in the blogosphere for its use of the blog as a public clearinghouse for interdepartmental issues. On one particularly contentious post, Deputy Chief Michael Moore fired back back at the anonymous “Officer M,” whose contempt for the department is evident in everything he writes.
Of the exchange, the LA Voice writes:
This is definitely the most open and transparent thing ever posted on the department’s fledgling blog - and a particularly brave choice, at that.
The department’s media officers could have quietly issued a press release, hoping for the great likelihood that even if the Times or Daily News did bother tasking a writer to it, the final squib would have been buried somewhere around B-7 and never seen the light of day.
But now that they’ve posted it online, where (gasp!) anyone can see and comment it, they’re finding themselves engaged in a donnybrook with a vocal handful of officers, officer-candidates and civilians - and they find themselves perched on the same craggy peak where so many other bloggers cling today: compelled to publish fast, overtaxed on accuracy and benefit-of-the-doubt issues, driven to take a stand and beset by their audience.
The LAPD blog has, at last, arrived.
Yasher koa!
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