Butter Knife at a Gunfight - Mayoral Site Check 11
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While Bob Hertzberg's campaign site gets all the attention, the multimedia leg of L.A.'s 2005 mayoral battle really began with Jim Hahn's 2001 site.
I say this because since then, little has changed at JimHahn.org beyond his high-powered consultant's decision to erase all the old content and promptly - by all appearances - go to sleep behind the label "under construction."
Instead of brandishing a bright, sharp sword in a campaign arena where blood is already being spilled, the Hahn campaign is content to leave a crumpled old Xerox of a child's drawing of a butter knife thumbtacked to the wall. Or maybe it's a spork ...
Meanwhile, Hahn makes Bob Hertzberg's ever-expanding ChangeLA.com site - now with daily posts and a slick, clickable crime stats map of L.A. precincts - look like a laser-sighted, satellite-guided recoilless rifle with depleted-uranium warheads.
Hertzberg just "went daily" today, leading with a post on L.A. crime that puts the lie to Hahn's original campaign pledge to make Los Angeles the "safest big city in America. The rest of the reconstituted home page offer a handful of comments on L.A. Times coverage and a 4th Floor Blog post about KNBC cameras catching the City Council napping.
And his spam engine is still in place, a six-shot derringer tucked in his boot.
Good luck with the daily thing, though. As any number of dedicated bloggers can tell you - even the ones who don't seem to hold down a day job - multiple daily posts can be backbreaking work.
Midway between the ridiculous and sublime ends of the mayoral web site spectrum lie the other contenders:
Lone Republican hopeful Walter Moore has been keeping a steady anti-Hahn drumbeat on his own site and in the openforum of LAVoice (Note - mayoral candidates and all Angelenos are welcome to post articles on the campaign and debate other candidates' positions, Moore was the first to try it).
Richard Alarcon's site tarts itself up every now and then with articles plucked wholesale from the Times or the Daily News (I wonder whether the LAT Reprints desk is getting their pound of flesh for that ...). But the AlaBLOG hasn't been updated since Day 1.
BernardParks.com has been changing torpidly since it was replated a few weeks ago - a handful of new press releases, mostly on crime and punishment, grace the "Newsroom" page.
And finally, the real shocker - Hahn's 2001 nemesis and the only candidate whose online campaign looks almost as dead as the mayor's, Antonio Villaraigosa, who appears to have quit paying his webmaster circa August 27.
To these last three and the mayor - prove me wrong. The race and the online public debate are getting pretty one-sided without your input, either here or on your own lackluster sites. C'mon, wake up, already.
