Walter Neary was elected to the city council in Lakewood in 2004. He's also contributed news articles and columns to local newspapers for more than a decade, and produced his own email newsletter, so it makes perfect sense that he would author an informative blog (called Neary-Sighted).

Neary began sending out email bulletins to people in 2003 when he was running for city council. He was the editor of The Lakewood Journal back in the mid-1990s. I asked him about his experience with the blog. Like a lot of bloggers, he found gaps in the flow of information that weren't being filled by the current news publications available. Here's his take:

Because Lakewood doesn't have a weekly print paper, it is much harder for people in Lakewood to know what is going on. It drives me crazy, and more importantly, frustrates me for every reason that I became a reporter, that every week five or six great weekly newspaper stories of great significance go by in Lakewood without being written. People in Gig Harbor, in Puyallup, in Federal Way all know vastly more about what is going on at the very detailed level in their cities than the people of Lakewood. I hate that.

Neary noted that Lakewood's e-paper, The Suburban Times, is "a valiant and useful effort to break through the information wall as well." But the lack of a traditional weekly newspaper focusing on the hyperlocal issues of the Lakewood community leaves Neary, and presumably his blog's readers, wanting for more.

If you fall in that category, check him out.

Pacific Lutheran's student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has received top recognition from the organization.

According to the news release, 12 campuses were honored as the best in their region. And of the 12 top chapters, PLU was selected as the very best.

Congratulations to the Lutes!

If you love Legos (like I do) then check out these block-action movie trailers from this CNet story. I can't imagine having the patience to produce one of these myself, but now I have a better sense of what's going through my son's mind when he plays with his Legos.

I attended a panel discussion Monday night with representatives from King 5, Seattle Times, MSNBC, Crosscut, the Stranger and DailyKos. Called "Today's News: A Webolution in Progress," it was sponsored by the Washington News Council and took place at the Seattle Public Library.

The most interesting exchange - to me, anyway - came when the topic of how to attract younger readers came up.

The mainstream folks recognized the need to find new ways to reach younger readers and described the concerted efforts they're making in this regard. (The News Tribune is no different, by the way. It's something we talk about often.)

But Josh Feit from the Stranger and Joan McCarter from DailyKos seemed perplexed. "We don't even think about that," they both said. They just do what they do and the audience comes.

Of course, this is one of the major advantages niche publication like the Stranger, with its excellent Slog blog, and DailyKos, a runaway blogging success story with half a million daily visitors, have over mainstream general interest outfits like newspapers and TV stations. But us MSMers would be wise to pay attention to how readers are responding to their model, which relies heavily on identity and personality and opinion. It blurs the line between journalism and activism, of course, and we're not open to that. But the conversational style of writing leads to vibrant discussion online. And that's a good recipe for loyal readership.

I'm a firm believer that news - fair, accurate and factual news - can be delivered in a conversational style and the mainstream news organizations that figure that out first will be best equipped to evolve in this new era.

It's TNT day at the fair today. Several of us are taking turns manning The News Tribune's booth and meeting and greeting folks. I'll be hanging out with the senior editors between 1-2 p.m. Given the fact that it's a rainy Monday, I expect we'll be doing a lot of talking amongst ourselves.

To figure out where to go (our booth is near the Blue Gate), I visited the Fair's web site and was struck by the cool Flash scene that serves as the splash page. It's immediately engaging, but if you're prone to motion sickness, good luck getting the scene to stop moving with your cursor. (I don't get car sick, so I like it.) Then there's a nifty Flash map, and like last year, information provided in Spanish. Good stuff, all around.

We tried something a little different this year by inviting readers to blog the fair on our site. You can see their coverage here.

I take exception to Chuck Taylor's rant on his Crosscut site, describing online newspapers in the Northwest as "bad and ugly." Working in the online newspaper world for the past seven years, I can safely state that Washington state is blessed with some of the best online newspapers in the nation.

The web sites for the Seattle Times, Spokesman-Review and News Tribune have all received national awards in the past couple years for their online presence. (A few years earlier, the Herald in Everett even picked up a few national nods for innovation.) And the P-I, in my opinion, has one of the better newspaper web sites in the country with massive offerings of photo galleries, robust reader blogs and first-rate staff blogs.

Of course, we could all do better. We make the most of our resources and technology, but there's always room to do more. Mr. Taylor, however, misses most of what makes our sites worth visiting with his rather uninformed critique published today.

I'd like to address some of Taylor's complaints about the TNT site specifically:

It's not news until we get around to posting it:
The News Tribune in Tacoma freshens its site even later, sometime after I get up in the morning, so I check it last. Not the best way to influence the regional agenda — or the D.C. congressional delegation.

All news articles that appear in the printed News Tribune are automatically published online around 1:30 a.m., so I'm confused about the "freshens" rate. Additionally, he looks at this feature from a print-first view. We're not waiting for the print deadline to publish news; we post news constantly all day. Friday, we posted 16 new stories by 5 p.m (see image). If readers – or the D.C. congressional delegation – want to keep tabs on our area, they should visit our site throughout the day instead of waiting until 5 a.m. the next day. Why get up so early to read yesterday's news?

Do not discuss amongst yourselves: Few newspapers let readers comment at the bottom of articles. (A notable exception is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)

With all due respect to my friends at the P-I, the TNT's web site has been allowing comments at least as long (not sure exactly when the P-I started). We began the practice in 2005 and last year we hosted an estimated 50,000 comments on our news stories. Our blogs feature even more robust discussion and last month accounted for almost 15% of our page views. But he doesn't give us any credit for blogging either, even though our Seahawks Insider blog has won national awards the past two years.

I confess that I don't read Crosscut's web site often. But given the superficial reporting that went into this article, it makes me wonder about the rest of the news published there.

Sometime soon (if all goes well with those darn computers) we'll be launching our own video channel where users will be able to upload their own videos to our web site. Kind of a South Sound Youtube, if you will.

If you like the idea of publishing video online but don't quite know where to start, check out this site: MakeInternetTV.org. It has clear instructions and great illustrations to get you up and running in no time. (Of course you have to buy a video camera first.)

Ah, sequels. Those recycled ideas that Hollywood trots out as creativity every summer and Christmas season leave you wanting something actually original. (No, I'm not a fan.)

But here's one I can't wait to see: South 5 - True Grit.

The folks who produced the audience-award from the Grand Cinema's 72-hour film festival in May are coming back with more. It won't be here til October, so to whet your appetite, check out the original.

Here's a look at some of the most popular content on our site last month.

This month we do the top 15 stories and include the number of comments (if any). It's interesting to note that some stories had dozens, but the Seahawks articles had none. I assume that's because there is so much Seahawks discussion happening at all times in the blog and our readers are savvy enough to know it.

1. Eight years of lies undone in one night (3 comments) - Robinson
2. Previous school trouble shown (82) - Lynn
3. Teacher charged with kidnapping (21) - Lynn
4. Free agent Payne could catch in with Seahawks - Boling
5. Teacher in sex case lost jobs before (32) - Lynn
6. Hawks show good and bad - Boling
7. Hypothetically OKC is ready - Williams/Hughes
8. Fitter 'Tubby' brings sexy back to Seahawks - Boling
9. Hackett's status? Well, what day is it? - Divish
10. Squat rookie looks like gem in the trenches - Boling
11. Megachurch in medium city (55) - Maynard
12. Not everyone's having a good time (61) - Beekman
13. Pit bulls attack, maul woman in bed (19) - Otto
14. Holmgren gives Hawks Knoxian stare of disgust - Boling
15. Lakewood shuts four motels (27) - Tucker

Blogs: Our ever-growing stable of blogs drew more than 600,000 page views in August. By way of comparison, a year ago on our site, all blogs combined had 316,000 page views. Here's how they stack up (by page views last month):

1. Seahawks Insider
2. Ed's Diner
3. Lights & Sirens
4. Sonics Insider
5. Bring the Noise
6. Huskies Insider
7. Mariners Insider
8. Biz Buzz
9. Inside the Editorial Page
10. Prep Blog
11. Grit City
12. Open House
13. FOB Tacoma
14. Neighborhood Blog
15. Fly Fishing
16. Editors Blog
17. Get Growing
18. TNT Photojournalism
19. Online in South Sound
20. The Inside Lane
21. Gamers Journal
22. 2010 Winter Olympics