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General Description
EPA employees from every organizational level and location will write blog entries about personal experiences related to their work, with the goal of engaging the public to help accomplish EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment. Non-EPA people may also be invited to blog such as other federal, state, tribal, or business leaders or staff. HQ Public Affairs will: y Maintain the blog, including the look and feel and pages for the comment policy, blog description, etc. y Review each post. This will primarily be for policy and legal issues; other editing will be very light, essentially only to correct spelling or grammatical mistakes. y Coordinate review with the Office of General Counsel for legal issues. y Upload posts putting the bloggers name at the top, and the bio and disclaimer at the bottom. y Moderate comments, denying only those that fail to meet the comment policy (attached). Regional Public Affairs Directors (PADs) and HQ Communications Directors (CDs) will: y Review and approve each post coming from within their respective region/program office. This will primarily be for policy and legal issues; other editing will be very light, essentially only to correct spelling or grammatical mistakes. y Submit to OPA. Supervisors of bloggers will: y Review and approve posts, and forward to CDs and PADs. This will primarily be for content accuracy, policy, and legal issues; other editing will be very light, essentially only to correct spelling or grammatical mistakes. Each blogger will: y Submit blog posts following using the blogging guidance explained below y Write a short description biography of themself to be posted each time they write. y Write 200-400 word posts. y Review comments on their posts and reply as appropriate in the form of further comments. y Keep in mind posts should not advocate policies that differ from official EPA policy. Depending on EPA staff interest, bloggers will usually write about once a month. This will prevent the blog from appearing to be owned by only a certain few regular bloggers. However, this should be allowed to vary depending on the nature of the blog. For example, someone might write several consecutive posts during an emergency response or for a special feature.
For each post, consider the following questions: y What's the nature of the problem you're working on? y How does your personal or work history relate to the problem? y What are you doing to come up with a solution? What are the benefits to the reader? (essentially, why should the reader care?) y What progress has already been made? y How does this fit into EPA's overall mission of protecting human health and the environment? y What can the reader do? You should: y Write 200-400 words for each entry (about 3/4 page of printed 12-point text). y No ghostwriting. Write your own posts. y Provide a very brief (1-2 sentences) biography of yourself, including name, relationship to EPA, and pertinent facts that will illuminate your blog entries. For example: Jack Sprat joined EPAs Denver office in 2006 and oversees underground injection wells in Great Plains states. His familys recent purchase of a hybrid car was inspired by their desire to improve air quality in the Rocky Mountains. y Submit or suggest at least one image, graphic, video, or other non-text item to include in your post. HQ Public Affairs can help you find appropriate materials if necessary, and will ensure that posts are accessible to people with disabilities. y Use personal experiences and perspective to engage the reader. Sharing your own interests and background lets readers see you as someone with issues and concerns similar to theirs, connecting them to EPA's mission. Similarly, you can connect issues at the personal level to how their businesses can help protect the environment. Examples: buying a new car, hiking and appreciating clean air, learning about your home's drinking water quality, and learning about compact fluorescent light bulbs. y Write expressively about how you personally are involved with EPA's efforts. Don't focus on your job title or position, but rather share stories of your work. Help people understand why EPA's efforts matter. Examples: taking air samples, responding to emergencies, serving on research vessels like the Bold, inspecting facilities, and talking to kids about protecting the environment. y Write in an informal, personal tone. Think party conversation, not news release or fact sheet. Write as if you are writing to friend with the expectation of getting something back. If you want, HQ Public Affairs can help you work on this. y Ask questions of your readers. This helps to foster a more open exchange of information and dialogue. Some examples you might use are What do you think? or Tell me your thoughts. y Create a title for each post. y Include at least one link to Web address on EPA's site (beginning with http:// ) where the reader can go for more information about your topic. More links are better. You may also link outside EPAs site if appropriate, but be sure to avoid any implied endorsement. yo Linking to non-.gov webpages links to a website outside of the federal government should link directly to pages with information pertinent to the post and not just to the organizations homepage. If at all possible, avoid linking to a webpage that provides a means for providing financial support to the organization, i.e., a DONATE button. y Suggest keywords/tags for each post. Again, HQ Public Affairs can help. Keywords help readers find your post. y Read comments made on your posts and respond as you see fit in the form of replying to a comment, or just adding a comment to the conversation. HQ Public Affairs will moderate comments. Note that comments may be critical, or even harsh. However, they will be approved unless they use vulgar language, are threatening, or violate other narrow restrictions. See the comment policy in Appendix 2. You should not: y Simply repeat EPA Web content or use your entry as a new EPA Web page. y Announce program activities or opportunities unless you are coordinating with a news release or other mechanism. y Mimic news releases. y Overwhelm the reader with facts and figures. Keep it simple and link to more details.
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Cautionary Areas
EPA blog content is federal content and, thus, public domain. Therefore, use only images that are also public domain. Photographs and video taken by EPA staff as part of their jobs meet this requirement. If you have questions about copyright, please contact HQ Public Affairs. EPA blogging is a privilege, not a right. Because of federal and legal responsibilities, EPA management reserves the right to review blog content or to un-invite anyone to blog. However, the content of any one blog post will generally be reviewed in whole to keep or remove, not edited piecemeal beyond grammar and spelling. Blog postings must not violate any federal laws. For example, they may not: reveal information about ongoing investigations discuss deliberative materials violate the regulatory process circumvent FOIA or other process violate privacy or copyright violate other legal issues that may apply Blog entries must not outright contradict or encourage misuse of EPA directions, guidance or other official information. Bloggers will not recommend or criticize specific companies, brands or products with personal opinions. Government facts about recalls, data, etc. are fine to use. Consider citing or linking to the source if it could be questioned. Bloggers will not give specific advice (e.g. medical, financial) unless citing previously published government material. Bloggers will not use the EPA blog platform to promote or secure the passage of desired legislation.
contain obscene, indecent, or profane language; contain threats or defamatory statements; contain hate speech directed at race, color, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, religion, or disability; or promote or endorse services or products. (Note that non-commercial links that are relevant to the topic or another comment are acceptable.)
Do not submit copyrighted or other proprietary material in any form unless you clearly indicate that you have permission to do so. By posting your comments or other work, you grant EPA and anyone viewing the EPA Web site irrevocable permission to copy, distribute, make derivatives, display or perform the commenters work publicly and free-of-charge. If you are a reporter, please send questions to the EPA Newsroom through normal channels rather than by submitting questions here as comments. It is our policy not to post reporter questions. We recognize that the Internet is a 24/7 medium and your comments are welcome at any time. However, given the need to manage federal resources, we intend to review and post comments from 8:30 am 5:30 pm Monday through Friday except for on federal holidays. We intend to review and post comments submitted at other times as soon as possible on the next business day. In some cases we ask you to provide your name and e-mail address, although providing either is optional. We request your name to make it easier to carry on a conversation. For this reason, we publish your name along with your comment. We ask for your e-mail address so that we can contact you if necessary. It is our policy not to publish your e-mail address. To protect your privacy, please do not include information (e.g., an e-mail address or phone number) in the text of your comment that identifies you. You can find additional guidance as to how EPA regards privacy issues within the privacy policy provided on EPAs main Web site. Thank you for taking the time to read this comment policy. We encourage your participation in our discussion and look forward to an active exchange of ideas. If you have questions about this comment policy or how we apply it, please contact us (linked to the Greenversations comment form). 5