And we're back!

Sorry for the long delay, but fixing a security flaw in our system required us to migrate the entire platform to a new version. That's tech speak for "a lot of work."

You are now free to comment on our news stories again. As always, play nice, be real and try to contribute something to the discussion.

And thanks for participating.

We continue to work on the system that powers the comments on our news stories in the hope of turning that feature back on as soon as possible. In the meantime, I want to clear up any misconceptions about why this is happening.

It's a technical problem that needed to be fixed. That is all.

We've received several emails that carried alarmed tones, jumping to one conclusion or another about why we turned the comments off. Here's a sample:

... some readers are interpreting the silence on the message boards as a TNT attempt at squelching dissenting speech. In the absence of an official announcement by TNT, one can expect a variety of conspiracy theories to be offered. An official announcement, posted on the News Tribune's website is (IMHO) in order.

So this post is as "official" as we'll get with an announcement since this is simply a technical problem and not a change in any policy. We're hoping to restore comments in the next day or so. Stay tuned.

Important programming note: We've disabled the ability for comments to be added to stories on our web site while we work on a technical glitch. I'll let you know when they're back online.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hopefully you have been following the blog-influenced local movement to "Take Back Frost Park." [See Tacoma Urbanist for details.] It's significant in the evolution of how vibrant online communities can exert power in the offline (some would call it "real") world. Andrew Fry had a nice post on this yesterday, tying in the work of Howard Rheingold with last week's Mark Zuckerberg interview-debacle that has been the buzz of the tech blogospher for days now. Fry called the local movement "an excellent example of social organization through like minded individuals through blogs."

It's not the first example and certainly won't be the last.

February was a time for sports on thenewstribune.com ...

In a thought-provoking post (on many fronts), A-list blogger and marketing guru Seth Godin advises real estate agents to follow one of two paths to survive and thrive in these trying times for that particular industry.

Option 1: quit. Option 2: become the mayor of your zip code.

Godin recommends those who follow Option 2 to use his Squidoo web service to accomplish this goal (he's a marketing guru, after all), but even if the idea is somewhat self-serving, it begs an interesting question:

Who is the mayor of your zip code?

Not the mayor of your town or city, but your hyperlocal area. Godin suggests that a good real estate agent could become that with a little effort and appeal.

Mayor of your zip code is a way to start a discussion group/info page about what’s happening in your slice of the world. You become the source of information, the watercooler, the person to turn to. Of course, if you spend ten minutes on it and then move on, it'll fail. But, if you spent 30% of your time working on your page (building it, curating it, promoting it), what do you think would show up in Google searches? What sort of interactions would you start having with people thinking about your little part of the world? Even better, what if you built a blog about your town, as good as any local paper, with high school sports and tax controversies and everything... don't you think the right people would read it?

Now you probably see why it's interesting to me - that bit about being as good as any local paper. The concept of serving an audience down to the hyperlocal level is something news organizations have been talking about wanting to do for years. Some are already doing it quite well. Others are not. In some zip codes, bloggers and other independent online media types have been filling the void.

Will real estate agents - or other small business entities - be next to enter the world of local news, information and community? It's an interesting possibility. If you look at the blogs for Azarra Salon (called Get Some Hairapy) and the Hotel Murano (The Looking Glass), you see examples of what Godin is talking about in reference to real estate agents. But these blogs don't do much in the way of local news and information (yet). Probably because it's not easy. Which is why Godin suggests that those who really dedicate themselves to the mission are the only ones who will succeed.

The same applies to local news organizations. We're not doing as well as we want to in this area, but take a look at the map on Scott Fontaine's blog and see where he's reported from in the past few months and you'll see a glimpse of where we are heading.