All-Star Legislative Bloggers

by Karl Kurtz

A couple of years ago, I wrote a "tools of the trade" article for State Legislatures magazine on "How to Bring Blogging to Life."  One of my top tips for aspiring legislative bloggers was:

Read lots of other blogs:The best way to learn how to blog is to blog. Read other blogs to learn how others approach this medium. Check out NCSL’s blog, The Thicket [ncsl.org/thethicket], for links to legislators who blog. 

I still think that's good advice.  But the right-hand column of The Thicket lists 69 links to legislative blogs.   Which ones should you read if you want to learn about legislative blogging?

To answer that question, I have reviewed our roll call of legislative bloggers and developed a list of all-star legislative bloggers.  My criteria for this list were:

1. The blog had to be by an individual legislator, not a party caucus or legislative staff office, and it could not be a campaign blog for another office (there's nothing wrong with campaign blogs--it's just not what I was looking for).
2. There had to be some recent blog postings, which I defined as since December 1.
3. Extra credit was given for evidence that the blogger also uses other social networking tools such as Twitter or Facebook to promote the blog.
4. The content had to be interesting and engaging, preferably helping the public to better understand the state legislature.

According to these mostly subjective criteria, here is my all-star list of legislative bloggers, in order of state name:

• AR: Rep. Steve Harrelson
• AR: Speaker Robbie Wills
• PA: Rep. Jesse White
• SC: Sen. Kevin Bryant
• TN: Rep. Stacey Campfield
  
• TX: Rep. Aaron Pena
• UT: Sen. Steve Urquhart

Please keep in mind that these are my personal favorites from our current list of legislators who blog according to some fairly vague criteria.  It's very difficult for us to keep track of legislators who are blogging, so we welcome suggestions of other legislators who have active blogs.

For more information and tips on legislative blogging, see another State Legislatures article, "State of Blogging." 

A rose from The Thicket to Olga Batishcheva and Joy Heiserman.

Comments

[Hollyonthehill.wordpress.com]

Steve Urquhart is a great choice. We also have another regular legislative blogger out here in Utah - Representative Craig Frank. He has been blogging for more than three years. You can find him at www.underthedome.org

[Karl Kurtz]

Thanks for the suggestion, Hollyonthehill. After reviewing Rep. Frank's underthedome.org blog, which I did not previously know about, I agree that he is also worthy of the All-Star legislative blogger designation. We have added him to our list of legislative bloggers. It's interesting that the name of his blog is very similar to that of another All-Star, Arkansas's Steve Harrelson.

[Jessewhite46]

Thanks for the props! I'm actually live-blogging from the floor of the PA House as we speak during a long, contentious debate on legalizing table games in Pennsylvania.