Saturday, December 19 2009, 08 PM ← →

VLADIVOSTOK, December 19, vladivostoktimes.com Blogs become very popular among the leaders of Russian cities and regions.  After the President Dmitry MEDVEDEV opened his own live journal in the internet, Russian officials start to create theirs, as RIA PrimaMedia correspondent reports with the reference to  

But not all bloggers understand why they need it. Very often they don’t see any difference between live journals and official web sites of their departments. Many of them just use blogs to post their press releases. That’s why their blogs are not renewed very often and the authors don’t answer the readers’ comments.

“They don’t need blogs for it, just official web site is enough” thinks the famous Russian internet journalist Anton NOSIK. “Blog is unofficial, “tieless”. When one comes to sauna in the suit and with a briefcase, it’s funny. When a person starts to write officially in his/her blog, it’s just an evidence that he/she doesn’t understand what it is”.

Art people takes the top of the blog rating. Also opposition representatives are in the top. But there are no officials. The reason for this is that a lot of VIPs don’t keep their pages by themselves; they have their assistants and press secretaries for it. They hire people and they lead their blogs. Sometimes officials tell them their posts, but often they just tell the general idea.

The budgets have special articles for internet pages. For example, the project of the Nizhegorodskaya Area budget for 2010 stipulates 4 million rubles for the web site of the Governor Valerie SHANTSEV.

But Far Eastern leaders don’t follow this tendency. RIA PrimaMedia correspondent managed to find only the live journal of the Amur Area Governor Oleg KOZHEMYAKO where the questions under discussion are politics and economics as well as some other subjects.  One of the latest posts is about fashion style.

The Chairman of the Government of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Egor BORISOV has the web site. It’s more conservative and official in comparison with the blog of the Amur Area Governor: the main posts are official reports about the held meetings. But there is also interactive page and each question is answered with good detailed explanations.

The Primorsky Territory Governor doesn’t have his blog. As the Territory Administration press service reported to RIA PrimaMedia, Sergey DARKIN doesn’t have time now to deal with it because he is very busy with preparation to APEC Summit.