progressive blogging at The Union

Thurs update: I'm trying to get an answer from an editor (of web or paper) at The Union as to whether the posts and comments from their previous blog a) were archived and b) will be put back online. One days-old email query not answered, now switching to asking in blog comments (which, according to Kady, are working now - "Our servers in Reno had some problems...a few things were lost before I got a chance to save them to our own system."(*)).

If 'conservative' can mean 'ok with treating the planet as disposable since Armageddon will be right with us' then a 'progressive newspaper' can be one that engages in gratuitous linkrot, deleting all old posts and comments from their WordPress blog and replacing it with redirecting visitors to a through-the-looking-straw pseudoblog.

So if and until it gets resurrected, my past links to their blog's posts and comments are kaput.

Reason?
from the dead blog, "We also hope to revamp the look of our blog soon and make it easier to read and skip from entry to entry.*"

My response (in comment to that post):

"Easier to read and skip from entry to entry"? Pat, could you explain what you mean by this?

Please to excuse my unwarranted suspicions, but I fear you mean that you'll be regressing to Swift's [sub]standard blog format, as manifested by the Greeley Tribune's Editor's blog; note that comments (and commenters) are effectively throttled. It's the antithesis of progressive newspaper blogging.

Please Pat, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you want to encourage participation, not smother it.

if such is true.

(and will old blog posts and comments be migrated - thereby breaking the permalinks, a web offense - or will you keep them in their current format and at their current URLs?)

Their reply? None, AFAIK*, except to do pretty much as I foresaw - although it was a surprise to find that the old posts and comments had been blown away altogether.

Advice for progressive newspapers: Cover news, not tracks.