802 Online

Well the Burlington Free Press has finally entered the Vermont blogosphere. Arts reporter Brent Hallenbeck is now posting to Brent's Notebook. It's embedded in the Freep's website, but when I click on comments, a Blogger-based comment window pops up. Huh. Guess I'll have to add him to my Vermont blogroll.

Too bad Casey's on vacation.

On a related note, the Rutland Herald and Times Argus are about to shut down their Reader Roundtable blogs. I'm not surprised. The RH/TA had initially contracted with several local bloggers to contribute posts, but most of them eventually stopped writing. The blogs have devolved into soapboxes for predictable political rants. They'll be disappearing from the sites on June 30.

Online editor Heather Aja sent me an email last week explaining the change. "We have noticed a drastic increase in participation in our forums at both the Herald and the Argus and feel as though the forums have taken the place of the blog," she writes.

"Over the next few months we will be exploring other options to enhance the sites," she continues. " We will be monitoring our traffic patterns and looking at reader feedback to see where new content and blogs will best fit the web sites."

I see from reading Aja's blog that she is also on vacation. If you've got feedback for her, send it to the email address on her site after July 4th.

Speaking of vacations, I'm out next week, too. Time to hang with my family in sunny South Carolina and play pass the baby.

UPDATE: Hey, I just saw that the Freep has also added vt.Buzz, a Vermont politics blog written by Sam Hemingway, Nancy Remsen, and Brent's wife Terri. Their first post says they'll be focusing on campaign '06.

Question — why are all the posts attributed to vt.Buzz? It looks like the writers will be signing their contributions at the bottom, but they will be posted by some other entity. The BN is set up that way, too. What's with the middleman? Also, why can't I find the politics blog from the homepage?