The Seattle Times editorial page launched its own blog today.
Welcome to STop, the Seattle Times Opinion blog where our editorial writers and editors share their evolving thoughts on a variety of issues. STop is a place where opinion writers and readers can exchange views and readers can learn more about how editorial positions are formed.The Times editorial page, for all the constructive critique I heap on it, does have some good writers who I look forward to reading more often -- I particularly like Bruce Ramsey on local politics and Susan Byrnes on education.
The opinions you read below are those of the individual writers, not necessarily views that will become formal positions of The Seattle Times.
At the end of the day, the Seattle Times blog in its initial format, as with other "big media" blogs, may still lack the more compelling aspects of the great big blogosphere. Independent blogs are interesting not only because they can be updated several times a day. They are interesting because they are, well, independent voices that in the aggregate offer more diversity of knowledge, experience and opinions than one is likely to find in the newspaper profession. Independent bloggers are also free of the institutional constraints and biases that inevitably bind those who work for a larger organization. A newspaper's in-house blog will more likely than not be more of the same, only with faster turnaround.
My humble advice to the Seattle Times: I look forward to the blog. I also encourage you to incorporate many outside voices with minimal editiorial oversight. Even (especially) those who often challenge your reportage and opinions.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 22, 2004 12:19 PMShouldn't it be "STOB".
And, how many blogs aren't opinion? Since they prattle on about the wonders of editing, they should have eliminated the redundancy and gone with "ST Blog", "STB", or "STO".