The Navy Blogging Discussion, Again

I thought this was interesting. Danger Room highlights an interesting link dating back to December 2005 regarding Navy and Blogging. Under the section of Interactivity.

a. DON commands may not operate unmoderated news groups, bulletin boards, or any other unrestricted access posting services. This specifically prohibits a publicly accessible, interactive site that supports automatic posting of information submitted by personnel other than those authorized by the command to post information. Some Web logs (blogs) may fall into this category. This does not, however, prohibit the command from posting frequent messages from the commanding officer or messages from the command’s constituents. There is also no prohibition on blogs operated by individual members as private citizens. The DON recognizes the value of this communication channel in posting current information and supporting the morale of personnel, their family and friends. As long as personnel adhere to specific restrictions on content, the DON encourages the use of blogs and recognizes this free flow of information contributes to legitimate transparency of the DON to the American public whom we serve.

It is noteworthy this policy is over 2 years old, because it is almost as if it was pulled out of the stack recently. The Navy shifted policy to engage the blogs sometime in early March. It is unclear where the shift came from, what was the cause, or who is driving it from within the Navy but a shift has happened.

I've seen it personally on a number of levels. It isn't just the Professional community outside the Navy either, my Navy.mil hits are up nearly 300% in the last two months, and that was before blog entries began appearing in CLIPs.

I may have to reevaluate some of my criticism of Proceedings from last year, because if I was guessing what prompted the shift in the Navy, I'd guess it was Steve Cohen's article in February 2008 Proceedings. No proof, just a hunch.

David Axe posted on his blog last night that he has been invited to join the next African Partnership Station later this year. I hope he goes, we do a pretty decent job of finding naval related news on the web, and there was an enormous void in the coverage of the recently concluded African Partnership Station in the Gulf of Guinea. I still contend that Sea Base off Liberia is the most important naval story of 2008 so far, way more important than the Satellite shoot down. Too bad so few know why.

However, if David goes to east Africa with the next Global Fleet Station, its a safe bet there will be pictures and there will be stories. After the way the media snubbed the Navy for what can only be described as the most important US military humanitarian mission to Africa since WWII, it makes a lot of sense for the Navy to look to bloggers to get the word out. The east African coast is the armpit of earth, if the Navy can make progress with regional partners with a Global Fleet Station in that hell hole, and get the stories out covering all angles through someone like David, we might be able to start answering the question regarding the role of bloggers in the National Defense debate.