Chicago Sun-Times Enters Blogosphere

Posted on December 29, 2005

The Chicago Sun-Times has entered the blogosphere with a general interest blog by journalist Debra Pickett. The blog has permalinks, comments and trackbacks and is powered by Movable Type. Pickett's blog actually debuted nearly a month ago on 11-30-05. This was around the time stories about senior citizen blogs were running as Pickett noted in her first post.

It's kind of a big day for us here at the Sun-Times, getting into the blogosphere and all. We would have come sooner, but, apparently, it is not actually possible to create a blog using a single five-year-old computer, a pack of gum and a piece of twine.
Having come a little late to the whole blog party -- as it happens, on the day my bosses asked me to do this, the Associated Press ran this story about senior citizen blogs, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence -- we're going to have to work hard at distinguishing ourselves.

The Chicagoist is not impressed: "She might be a fine columnist, but writing a column of 750 words and daily blogging require two different strategies. She should use her blog to talk about mini-stories too short for a column, but still relevant enough to publish."

Will Debra Pickett respond to Chicagoist or just ignore them? A smart move for the Chicago Sun-Times as it builds its newspaper blog network would be the mimic what the St. Petersburg Times has done with its blog network. Beneath their own list of blogs the St. Petersburg Times includes a large list of links to local blogs. It is a good way for a newspaper to include local bloggers and show them some link love.