You may have noticed that my site was down for about the last 20 hours. I was trying to clean up some unused codes in the sidebars but deleted something necessary. I don’t know what.

My host, ANHosting.com, restored my site from their last server-side backup, done on Feb. 19. The posts between then and now were not restored. I recovered them, however, before the restore and will be reposting them ASAP. Hopefully, the date-time and the permalinks themselves will be the same, so if anyone linked to them I hope the links will still work. Unfortunately, comments will not be restored. Stand by, thanks!

Update: All online now.

I’ll be at a retreat until Wednesday late afternoon, way out in the woods, away from civilization and any hope of even a dialup connection. Have a great three days!

Update: Since the last time I was here, wireless broadband has been installed. I have limited time to post but will post what I can when i can.

I wrote about whether and how DOD supports bloggers in its public-information programs with a somewhat jaundiced view of just where blogs fit in the grand scheme of things - namely, almost every blog out here is hardly a blip on the national-audience screen. Now Andi’s World offers another perspective about how DOD should treat blogging, especially milblogging.

At the MilBlog Conference, Matt [Blackfive - DS] threw a shot across the bow to the Department of Defense. It went something like this: If you place unduly harsh restrictions on milbloggers, or worse — shut them down altogether — you’re going to be left with those who don’t play by the rules.

Which is an excellent point. The military has been tightening the screws on blogging by military members, leading at least one active-force blogger to shut down for fear of reprisal.

Andi writes,

Rules on what can and can’t be publicly posted are absolutely necessary. However, it seems that some segments of the military have shot themselves in the foot by going overboard. As a result, many first-hand accounts of the situation on the ground are stifled, and the public has to rely on often-slanted and sometimes-bogus media coverage.

Quite so. It needs to be pointed out, though, that however sensible or not DOD’s regs are, they apply only to military members (and I assume DOD or service civilian employees) and are entirely within the law. Indeed, there remains on the books a set of regulations governing the still-legal Wartime Information Security Program, modeled after World War II’s formal censorship programs. It hasn’t been invoked since then except briefly durng the Vietnam War.

However, what does DOD’s policy toward military bloggers portend for civilian bloggers covering military-related topics? As Drudge sometimes says about stories, “developing,” but under the Rumsfeld regime I don’t think it portends well.

Over at Captain’s Journal, blogger Herschel Smith is in a snit because the answer he got after he asked some questions of the US Marine public-affairs offices for Camps Lejeune and Pendleton on the topic of personal protective armor for deploying Marines. Before getting tjhe substance of the answer he was given, here are his questons.

1. What units will deploy between now and mid-2007?
2. Will these units be issued the new “Modular Tactical Vest” prior to deployment?
3. Will there be any units deployed without having been issued the Modular Tactical Vest?
4. Will any of the units deployed between now and mid-2007 be deployed without having been issued the new helmet padding system in lieu of the webbing or sling suspension? (Editorial note: This last question pertains to a new helmet padding system that will help prevent traumatic and permanent brain injury from IEDs).

And Mr. Smith is dismayed - dismayed, mind you! - that the Marines didn’t answer these questions. He says the answer he got was,

The media relations personnel would only communicate via telephone. We talked to [name withheld] at Camp Pendleton, and were told that the Department of Defense does not support blogs.

For some reason, this offends Mr. Smith so he spends the rest of his post foaming at the mouth about how stupid DOD is for not kowtowing to blogs.

First things first: let’s discuss the questions themselves and see whether the information he asked for might have played any part in getting blown off by the PAOs. Um, yes. If I was still a PAO (I spent three tours as an Army PAO) I would not have answered any of them, either. Deployment information is classified and we’re not about to discuss specifics about what combat-related equipment units will have when they ship out to theater, either.

So a PAO isn’t going to waste time with that. Now, the manner that the PAO dismissed him was somewhat crass, true, but I still would have done so, though more politely: “Mr. Smith, we do not discuss any such information. Thank you for your interest in the Marine Corps, and have a nice day.” or something like that.

Smith also seems miffed that, “The media relations personnel would only communicate via telephone.” Exactly: I was a PAO long before there was an internet, much less blogs, when a fax machine was considered high tech (really) and even then, reporters either communicated with me on the phone or not at all. I didn’t have time to type out individual responses to queries and then hand them to a staffer to fax. Emailing takes too much time and frankly only generates more email. So it’s the phone or nothing.

Unwittingly, Mr. Smith gives the game away with this nugget.

We responded by posing the following question: So if we were the LA Times or some similar MSM outlet, you would support our questions? In a profound revealing response, Camp Pendleton said, “but Sir, you aren’t the LA Times. You’re a … blog!”

Note the use of the grandiose, royal “we.” Herschel, who is “we?” You’re the only writer listed on your site. And like it or not, you (and I, too) are not the LA Times. I don’t know how long you’ve been blogging, but your Sitemeter reflects about 11,200 total hits. Mine tops 3.4 million, and I am very small fry in the public discourse.

Listen: blogs are not important just because they are “citizen’s media.” There are only so many hours in a day, and PAOs are going to spend them the most productive way they can. Sorry, with rare exceptions, that’s not going to be talking to bloggers with only 11,000 - 3.4 million hits.

And the clincher: Members of Congress don’t read blogs. Their staffers may snip some politics-related posts from very prominent blogs, of which there are only a handful. You can bet your net worth, though, that if a Member contacted the Marine Congressional-liaison office and said, “I read on Donald Sensing’s blog this morning . . .” - that every Marine PAO I called would knock an LA Times reporter down get to the phone to talk to me.

The fact is, that for all the backslapping we like to do about how bright a trail we are blazing, very few blogs are worth spending any time with for a PAO.

Reader Richard Heddleson, whence the link, emailed me:

The burden on DoD personnel responding to every “professional” journalist, former military person turned blogger, arm chair general, teenager with a blog or foreign provocateur would be immense. And how is the PAO to know into which class the individual falls?

Exactly. Richard also asks, “Should DoD treat all inquiries equally?” No, because not all inquiries of of equal worth and not all have equal value to being answered. As I said, the day is only so long and it is easily filled by responding to traditional-media (read, large-audience) queries.

All that being said, the Marine PAO blew it when answering. First, as I said, it was a bit crass and second, it is not true. There is no DOD policy not to support blogs. I have gotten excellent information from military public-affairs offices because my blog discusses military operations and policies. I routinely receive releases via email from the US Marine RCTs in Iraq, for example, and also the CENTCOM releases. I did not ask for them (though anyone can ask for them, including private citizens); they started sending them to me, first emailing me that they hoped I’d be able to use the information on my blog. The couple of occasions I have queried back I have received excellent responses.

Even so, let’s not kid ourselves where we stand in the grand scheme of things.

Update:

USA Today has a must-read piece on blogging and libel. Bloggers are not immune to libel findings. Read and heed, ye bloggers.

I posted a couple of days ago that my host, navmonkey.net, is getting out of the hosting biz, so I had to move to a new host. I selected An Hosting, principally because they offer first-cabin assistance in transferring the site and getting it back up and running. And they deliver. There were several technical glitches in transferring my site, which is now complete, principally because I really didn’t know what I was doing. But their techies were patient and very fast to respond.

Alles gut jetz, so we’re back. So while more content is being formed, go read today’s piece by David Warren, “Doing the Enemy’s Work.”

I was in discussion with staff of the Tennessee Conference of the UMC this week about whether it would be helpful for the Conference’s email listserv subscribers to have access to a site about the Israel-Hezbollah war that could help them integrate information from the media and provide more background and context than they are getting.

The Conference’s internal-information staff agreed that such a site could be helpful, so I have begun a blog called, simply, “Israel-Hezbollah.” Its birth annnouncement was sent to listserv members this morning. Anyone can read it, of course, so take a look!