At today's bloggers briefing, the folks behind the State Department's new blog, DipNote told us about the blog’s genesis, and how they've managed to run an authentic blog while still representing a Federal bureaucracy. We also heard from Ralph Reed, and NTU's new president, Duane Parde.

DipNote
Heath Kern, director of digital media and Editor in Chief of DipNote, and Foreign Affairs Officer Tara Foley, one of the State Department’s top bloggers told us about DipNote, the State Department's new blog.

DipNote launched less than three months ago, and its site traffic immediately took off. According to Kern, they have four thousand subscribers to their RSS feed (one of those being myself).

Kern explained that they try to keep the editing of the blog posts to a minimum, and have fast-tracked the clearance process to make sure new content gets up quickly.

I asked Kern when we could expect Secretary Rice to wade into the blogging pool.

She said she’s spoken with the Secretary and they’re waiting until the new year to put something out there. She stated that they want the Secretary’s first foray into the blogosphere to be memorable.

I also asked if the State Dept. was planning to have blogs in foreign languages, since diplomats have begun commenting on popular Arabic language blogs.

Kern said that her staff was too small to handle a project like that right now, and that because of Federal laws, there’s two sides to the State Department's public online presence: www.state.gov which Kern's runs, is targeted at US citizens and www.usinfo.state.gov run by the office of Public Diplomacy which is aimed at non-US citizens. So right now she doesn't have the mandate to post content in foreign languages.

After listening to Kern, I feel a wee bit better about the state of America's public diplomacy, and if you haven’t already, make sure you add DipNote to your list of daily reads.

American Environmental Coalition
We also heard from Ralph Reed, who's leading a new organization, American Environmental Coalition, that's looking to "bring balance to the debate" over the environment and global warming.

The group is a coalition of 39 conservative organizations, whose total membership numbers over four million.

AEC believes that the best way to preserve the environment, is to have a strong economy. I'd point you to AEC's website, but the site, www.AmericanEnvironment.org doesn't appear to be up and running just yet.

NTU's New President
National Taxpayers Union’s new president, Duane Parde, came by to introduce himself to the blogosphere. Parde told us he is, "Looking forward to enhancing our online presence in the coming year."

NTU is already doing some good work online. Here's their latest video, explaining the negative impact of a government subprime mortgage bailout.