CNN carries a Reuters report on the PA Tourism Office hiring people to travel around the Commonwealth and blog about their experiences, in order to promote tourism here. All of the blogs are at VisitPA.com.
I assume that these are real people, even though some of the descriptions make the whole project sound like a parody of reality TV -- and not at all like something that's part of the blogosphere. There's Elliot, the outdoor adventurer who's biking in Eastern PA; Tamara and Michael, hipster roadtrippers also wandering around Eastern PA; Tom, on his hog in and around the Laurel Highlands; Preethi & Manisha, "culture vultures" from Pittsburgh who are hitting some of the tonier "hot" spots around town; Robert the history buff in Gettysburg; and the Kruger family of Pittsburgh, which went to Erie.
The PA Tourism Office is missing a great opportunity here: Instead of hiring people, paying them to travel, and inventing blogs that are hard to find and hard to read (apparently no one up there has heard of RSS), the Office could hire a single person to monitor RSS feeds for some of the thousands of blogs that already exist in the Commonwealth. There's no need to manufacture enthusiasm. Show off some of the natural energy of the state.
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