For Immediate Release
Thursday, May 11, 2006

(Washington, D.C.) – NGP’s Director of Online Campaigns, Chris Casey, was featured in a Chicago Tribune column earlier this week that looked at how elected officials are using blogs.

The May 6 column, “Politicians' lifeless writing smacks of party line prose,” quotes Casey on what constitutes a blog and why politicians sometimes want the title but not the concept: "‘You see sites that want to wear the label of that name for whatever coolness factor it has,’ said Casey. ‘The defining characteristic of a blog is the ability to post comments. If there's no comments allowed, then that's no different than what we were doing on the Hill 12 years ago when we posted press releases.’"

The column continues: “Casey cites the Web locale of Jack Carter, Jimmy's son and a candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, as a political site that does blogging right. His blog(www.carterfornevada.com/blog)
is written by daughter Sarah, who not only pulls together an intelligent, almost daily ‘blog roundup,’ but she's close enough to the candidate to dare to be interesting.”

Casey heads NGP’s department that designs and develops Web sites, e-communications tools, and online campaign strategy. He is the author of The Hill on the Net: Congress Enters the Information Age.