Uncle Sam Blogs You

Early this year, the Army Reserve dipped a toe into the blogosphere. The move came well after active-duty soldiers, especially those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and military families and retirees had created a large and lively community of military Web logging. After administratively punishing some soldiers for their blogging, and informally citing others for operational security violations, the Army finally developed a policy governing what soldiers can and cannot do on their blogs in March 2005.

Now, the Reserve is embracing military bloggers as a conduit for news designed to persuade soldiers to lengthen their tours of duty. In January, a handful of military bloggers received variations of an e-mail from Charlie Kondek of Haas MS&L, a Detroit public relations firm. The service hired the company to "test a new outlet for public information," Kondek wrote in his e-mail. "The Army believes that military blogs are a valuable medium for reaching out to soldiers," Kondek added. "The Army plans to offer you and selected bloggers exclusive editorial content on a few issues you're likely to be interested in."