If you care about transportation and gridlock and how our region will handle these issues in the future, check out a relatively new blog called Cascadia Prospectus.

It launched a few months ago and is primarily written by Matt Rosenberg of the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center For Regional Development, which is a Seattle-based think tank that does research and holds forums on transportation, trade, energy and urban planning issues.

Not surprisingly, the blog also focuses on these issues as they relate to the Cascadia region (Washington, Oregon, British Columbia).

Rosenberg wrote via email that he hopes to expand the stable of blog writers in the future and encouraged anyone with ideas about topics to cover to contact him at mattr@discovery.org.

The blog, which has an attractive look-and-feel, would seem to score too high on the wonk meter for my regular reading habit. But Rosenberg has done a nice job so far by connecting some very big issues with how it will affect Joe Six-Pack (or Mark Six-Pack, in this case). I'll definitely check in on it from time to time.

Mike Sando won the Eppy Award for Best Media-Affiliated Sports Blog again today (he won the same award last year, too). The award, sponsored by Editor & Publisher magazine, is open to news organizations of all sizes, including web sites and magazines (think ESPN.com and Sports Illustrated).

"That's great news," Sando said today. "It's a great honor and it says a lot about all the support I get from others (at the TNT) whose names don't appear on the award."

See the full list of winners here.

Congratulations, Mike!

There's an interesting story leading the upstart news site Crosscut this morning, suggesting that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will be part of a pilot project to test a version of the long-promised electronic paper within the next two years.

The concept of e-paper has gained a sort of Holy Grail status among some news publishers who see it as the best of both worlds - digital and print. I love new technology, but I'm skeptical that this will dramatically change the news business in our lifetime, unless the e-paper plays music, takes photos and does e-mail. I don't think there is too much appetite for yet another gadgety device, but I still think projects like this are worth pursuing because you never know.

Who would have thought a few years ago that every other person in an airport would have a goofy Bluetooth thingy attached to the side of their head?

Tacoma's Eastside has its own blog, running primarily on neighborhood pride. Roxanne Murphy started it as an online newsletter and chose a blog platform simply because it's the easiest (and free) technology to use in this situation. Good choice.

Unfortunately, Murphy is not inviting comments on the site (yet). Since she's doing this on a volunteer basis she doesn't want to bite off more than she can chew. But maybe once the blog gets going, someone else will volunteer to moderate and edit the comments?

Either way, it's a nice addition to the local blogosphere.

If you live in Tacoma and have friends or family in Seattle, you have to love this short film that won the audience choice award for the Grand Cinema's 72-Hour Film Competition this year.

Here are the parameters teams had to work with ...

Teams had one weekend--72 hours--to write, shoot, score and edit their film in order to qualify. They were also required to use the following criteria:
Dialogue: "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."
Prop: a hat or cap
Location: a Tacoma landmark
Action: throwing, tossing or dropping something

And here is a list of the other winners.

Kevin Freitas put together a cool time lapse video from DOT cameras that shows how the Narrows Bridge went dark recently. It's linked from his blog here.

My sister roped me into running the half-marathon yesterday and I’m glad she did. It was a great race and great event for Tacoma. Here are some Monday morning observations and links:

Results: This was my first time running an organized race, but I have heard that a “chip race” like this (when runners where a computer chip in an ankle strap) means you can produce immediate results. It’s Monday morning and I’ve checked the web site. Where are they?

Photos: I saw dozens of people with cameras along the course, but other than a photo gallery by our Drew Perine and a few snapshots from Kevin Freitas, no one else is sharing. You can upload images to our site here and look for submitted images here.

True grit: I was impressed with most of the organization and volunteer work for the race, but had to chuckle at the dead raccoon in the road at mile 11.

Lame T-shirt: If the event organizers need to work on anything it’s the race T-shirt. A 50/50 gray short sleeved shirt for a $75 entry fee? Ouch. We were hoping for a long-sleeve Dri-fit shirt or something. “This has yard work written all over it,” was my sister’s response.

Great support: It was awesome and inspiring to see all the local supporters who turned out at 7 a.m. to cheer on the runners. The Mother's Day signs and T-shirts were especially cool. My favorite sign of the day was being held by a little boy who looked to be about 8. It read: "The pain is temporary, the pride is forever."

Several local blogs have write-ups. Here are some I found:

Bling Fling

A surprising day (an account from the half-marathon winner)

Michelle's Microcosm

Wendyspace

The Back of the Pack

UPDATE: Still no link to the results on the web site as of 4:30 p.m. Monday, but a co-worker found them for me by using this new site called Google. (Link is here.)

Today, The News Tribune bids farewell to Bruce Kellman, a photojournalist who has served at the newspaper for 42 years. Dozens of his newsroom colleagues gathered at the TNT today to thank him and wish him well.

"It's been a good gig," Bruce said today. "As Peter (Haley's) wife once said, your job is to go on a field trip every day."

As one person said today, Bruce was a true gentleman as well as a great journalist. Check out the online slideshow, where you can see one photo from each of Bruce's 42 years of shooting photographs at the paper.

In case you hadn't heard, a newspaper can't be everywhere all the time. That's why the digital age has been such a boon for readers - it's easy for others to "do-it-yourself" and provide information and observation when a traditional news organization cannot.

Case in point: the Get Smart Tacoma Summit this past weekend. The TNT published an advance story telling readers about it, and the Op-Ed folks authored an editorial in support of the effort. But we didn't cover the event, so to find out how it went, you needed to turn elsewhere.

I found a couple of entries on blogs that help fill in the gaps. A blog called Mac Net Journal published an exhaustive list of observations and notes from the event. Suzanne Morse, the opening speaker for the event, weighed in with her thoughts about Tacoma and this community's prospects for positive change. (Let's just say she's bullish on T-town.)

This is why I maintain that professional and citizen journalists co-existing in the same ecosystem are mutually beneficial.

Did anyone else write up the weekend's event? Post a link in the comments.

I'm spending the day in Seattle at a workshop sponsored by the Online News Association. Ten other staffers from the TNT are here, too, with about 90 other journalists from around the region to discuss online news stuff.

I got to speak at a morning session and was asked an interesting question about half-way through: "Excuse me, but I'm live blogging this, and a reader wants to know what a 'legacy newsroom' is?"

How cool is that? I'm sure that kind of thing happens all the time at super-techie sessions, but I hadn't seen it in a journalism gathering. And we're supposed to be the "real" reporters. (See the blogger's post here).

Later, I was sitting next to a blogger/pundit named Chris Pirillo who was live broadcasting himself as he blogged about the sessions. He had a new Mac laptop that has a tiny webcam in it that is always trained on him. There was a little widget on his screen that said 44 people were watching. Amazing. (Here's a link.

Each month, I like to post the top 10 most-read stories on thenewstribune.com the previous month. It's something I did via email to our newsroom long before I started this blog, but it's a natural fit (I think).

Some months, like the one just concluded, tell us more about the collective Web than about our own local audience. Two of the top 5 stories drew extra page views because of the viral nature of the web. John McGrath's column about North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams was picked up and linked by several fan sites in the Tar Heel state.

And our January story about the Foss High School shooting (Death stuns school) gets linked by Yahoo News any time there is a new school shooting. So readers who were getting updates on the Virginia Tech tragedy would be provided links to past shootings and many chose to follow the link to our site.

Anyway, that's enough two-bit analysis. Here's the list:

1. Homeowner gets punk'd (Lynn)
2. Carr a worthy investment? (Boling)
3. Roy Williams a Hall of Famer? A crying shame (McGrath)
4. Death stuns school (Lynn)
5. State might need new nickname (Gordon)
6. Cameras catch kiss, raising questions (Champaco)
7. I-5 overpass must sink first (Sand)
8. Police have one for Nancy Drew (Mulick)
9. Sitting tight with Pollard (Sando)
10. Suspect's violent past revealed (Robinson)

NOTE: Some of the links above go to stories that were originally published on our old system and the photos are not available.

One of the most ambitious online efforts in the region is happening at the library. The Pierce County Library system is adapting to the information age with blogs, podcasts and now, video on demand.

A new service, called MyLibraryDV, offers 400 programs and hundreds of hours of programming for downloading to library patrons’ home computers. “I’ve done it and I'm not a techie, so it has to be easy,” said Mary Getchell, Communications Director for the library system.

The service is free if you have a Pierce County Library card, which I don’t because I live in Tacoma so I haven't been able to try the service. (I could purchase a card for $103 a year, of course.) This service is a huge a benefit to the half million potential customers the library serves in unincorporated Pierce County and 14 cities and towns (not available in Fircrest, Ruston or Fife). It offers unlimited downloads, which is different than the popular audio book download service it launched in January.

To read more about the video download service, go here. To check out the library’s impressive list of blogs and podcasts, go here.