For your notational crudite, and not for your sheep

Okay, fine, I am all for government agencies doing what they can to communicate with the public. While the US State Department is not as shrouded in secrecy as some other agencies, including private companies that make US foreign policies with no disclosure or oversight at all, a start is a start. And a bad start is a bad one. Shall we begin with the name? Dipnote is presumably meant to convey something like "note about diplomacy." State Department, will you trust me if I tell you that it does not come off with that connotation? As for the content, well, they have only begun, but it does not say much and about what it says there is not much to be said.

Having said all that, offering information at all is probably a step in the right direction. Offering timely and useful information with a degree of interactivity and pointers to additional information would be a bigger step. Real dialogue and openness would be too much to hope for, and then the source providing it would be a different source altogether.