New Local Blog

The Journal Gazette's Justin Cohn has started Fort Wayne's latest newspaper-sponsored blog: Ice Chips. It appears to be centered around the Fort Wayne Komets (hence the name), and is the first local blog from a reporter. (Tracy Warner and Leo Morris are both editorialists.)

That's significant because, as I've said before, in my opinion, those covering a beat like Cohn can make for excellent bloggers. They're already experts on a subject (in this case, the Komets) and have established relationships with sources. No doubt Cohn knows more information about the Komets than the Journal has room to print, and a blog is the perfect medium to share it with the public.

There's also the matter of Cohn being able to update his blog at any hour of the day or night, so when a story breaks, he can be the first to report it to his readers. And, as we all know, every reporter likes being first...

Ice Chips: http://blogs.fortwayne.com/ice_chips/

UPDATE: Sherry Skufca, managing editor of the JG, comments on this post:

Thanks for the announcement, but we're still in the construction stage on our Komets site and this was a "test" blog. It's real info, obviously, but you won't see the updates and additional information we're planning for a couple weeks yet.

But, again, we appreciate the notice.

For the record, the Cohn blog was promoted on the JG's website this morning, which is how I discovered it: