Friday, February 09, 2007

Council Gazzette: a good idea falls flat

The then-new Council President Eric Garcetti had a great concept in putting out an online (and sometimes hard copy ) document call the "Council Gazette." This would serve to update all readers as to the issues happening in each council district. In March of 2006, the inagural issue was released and posted online. For the last 11 months - nothing more has come of it.

Councilman Garcetti - how can we get this idea back off the ground and happening monthly to illuminate the success in the 15 districts of the city? Perhaps a strictly online version? A blog of sorts for all of the Council offices to post on? This could create a lot of information and some friendly competition between the council members to get their information posted (as long as they couldn't just "publish" press releases and posts had a maximum word count). Let's embrace technology and spread the word about what's going on in each district.

2 comments:

Sahra Bogado said...

My guess as to why this isn't happening anymore?

This is a totally redundant method of disseminating those boring "Councilman X Does Unimportant Thing in Vain Attempt to Score News Coverage" press releases that are already hosted on each individual councilman's web-site.

A council digest (like the legislative digest in Sacramento) would be more helpful. Better still would be an equivalent to the Robert M Hertzberg Institute for the City of L.A. To bring staffers, and the councilmembers up to speed on the precise structure, culture, and methods of the public entity they work for. Doesn't something like that exist already?

Anonymous said...

We've been waiting for a public affairs position at the Chief Legislative Office to be hired. They've been interviewing and we hope to have someone up soon. We made the first one ourselves as a template for the whole council, but want to have something that is sustainable for the long haul. Sit tight and we promise it will be coming and have good information for all Angelenos!