CAA: Advice for FSO bloggers

Consul-At Arms (who has apparently started a new blog) answers an email from new FSO blogger The Hegemonist (as an anthropologist, I LOVE that name for a blog) asking for advice on blogging as a Foreign Service Officer.

CAA writes:

Encourage and applaud the things you feel the Department or the Service is doing right; be judicious in your public criticism (after all, Damning-with-faint-praise is something of an FS tradition);

Take advantage of the many opportunities to explain/defend your profession, the Service, the Department, when commenting at other web logs or when unfair/unbalanced media coverage slams us. As a Department, our PD effort is on the weak side, with lots of room for improvement, and as "new media" proliferates and increases in importance, it's incumbent upon individual FSOs to help "carry the water." It's not about being a mindless cheerleader, it's about combatting outdated and pernicious stereotypes that interfere with accomplishing our core missions. An informed citizenry is a bulwark of democracy."