The blogs have a number of posts that generated rich discussion threads on a number of topics. Many times, John Robinson is a participant in the conversation, which varies from the classic “hit-and-run” style of an editor’s printed column.

These three discussions stemmed from feedback the newspaper received from readers. In each case, the newspaper got an angry letter to the editor and a letter was posted for feedback.

The first example came from a picture of African-American children eating watermelon. Many readers questioned whether the newspaper should have printed the photo, considering the historically racist nature of such photos. Still, many argued that people were stuck on race, when this was simply a picture of a cute kid eating watermelon on a hot day. This post garnered 34 comments.

The second example also came from people offended by a photo, this time of naked runners. 29 people commented on the letter to the editor which compared the photo to soft core porn. People even began quoting scripture as justification for both clothing and streaking.

This discussion on good news from Iraq also came from a letter to the editor. It elicited 48 posts. Discussion got pretty heated, and John Robinson stepped in to calm everyone down. Interestingly, a few of the commentors express great disdain for the news media, and question their credibility. So why then, would they want to comment on a newspaper’s blog? Are they subscribers to the newspaper? The beauty of it is, they are interacting with the newspaper, even though they don’t agree with it. The blog allows them to give voice to opinions they don’t see reflected in their local newspaper.

The Editor’s Log post with the most comments was one on political sign vandalism during the 2004 election, which received 86. Robinson said that post gave him the record for the highest number of comments, until he was beaten out by the education blog. One commentor, however, doesn’t seem to think the blog has been successful, and writes early on: “Why do you think the Editor put his comments in here? Would it be because he has a Democratic audience? Maybe you guys should stop posting to this failure they call an Editors Log/Blogg. Unless, of course, you need a job and your an out of work Journalist. :-) ”