Here is a thought for a Blog: Small town service. I recently called an independent muffler and brake shop in Elkhorn. I needed both; muffler and brakes. The gentleman that I spoke with growled that he could not get me in for at least 3 days because he had "one on the rack getting repaired." Then the great customer service continued, he hung up. Keep this in mind when calling for muffler and brake service at local shops in Elkhorn.

These blogs come a step closer to where your new focus is. Which is local. However you still have a ways to go. The smaller towns that you service are starved for greater attention. They need the investigative reporting that only an outsider can provide. No one in a small town wants to be the one who points out the elephant in the square, but they need someone to.

Local papers don't want to offend, they want to report on positive stories and school functions. There is a vacuum for harder news coverage. Someone who explores and reports on the difficult issues facing these towns, and the people who are making the decisions.

I would like to see you expand your coverage of the smaller towns. Rock County is becoming increasingly intertwined. And we each impact the other.

Wikiprimera.

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. Still others are used for poorly crafted insults often incorporating poor spelling with atrocious grammar.

Short for weB LOG

I love BLOGS!!! It's a great way to engage the community in discussion between the readers. I was wondering, though, where does the term BLOG come from? Was it originally an acronym for something? Anyone...Anyone...Bueller...Anyone...?

No, this is the discussion or comments thread. Threads are attached to both blog posts and news story posts.

This is the web log down here. That is the story up there.

While it's clear to me what the difference is (hey, I was one of the earliest people to use Blogger), doing blog updates does create or raise expectations.
.
For instance, putting out a blurb -- "Building on fire" -- is relatively easy, but so is updating it later -- "Fire extinguished". The Gazette may want to consider a standard disclaimer to wait for the full story in the next Gazette.
.
Another is that if it's easy to put out a blurb on one story, it's also easy to do so for other stories. Obviously the Gazette doesn't employ a stable of bloggers as professional city "news" blogs (e.g. http://www.chicagoist.com) do, often with a requirement that their bloggers post X items per day to encourage constant incoming traffic. So the stories that do make it to the news blog may seem a bit random. It might help to clarify what things are considered in choosing to post a blog item.
.
Another issue to consider is when a story in the news blog IS updated in the news section. I often see comments on the blog items by people who have not seen the updated, complete news story. Linking from the blog item directly to the news story could be considered.

Blog Blog Blog. Blogs are like these comments, including mine. It's better to take a statistical approach to their collective contents, rather than focus on the individual entries.

Blogs are blogs and identified as such. Comments on news stories should be just that "comments". In the current setup, the news story comments have turned into blogs where the same handful of posters post comment after comment ad nauseum.

The comments feature should be limited to one comment per registered user, per 24 hour period.

This would make the comments much more "readable" and enjoyable.

I really don't see a difference in your news storys and the blogs because you allow posting on both... its all rather ' bloggish'

Scott, I appreciate the blogs and often look for any updates and reader comments. Your website especially shined on Feb. 6 with the blog updates during the blizzard. I was stuck at home and only could look out of the windows, and your site gave me information I could not get otherwise. Most other news sources in Southern Wisconsin did a poor job, as evidenced by the traffic jam on I-90. Thanks to the Gazette staff and readers for that and all other blogs.

Thank you so much for finally explaining the concept of a news blog to your online readers! Hopefully this will cut back on unnecessary criticisms.