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Just hours after I posted below about the OC Register's Lakers blog, the Times sends a news release about the launch of a blog following the team on LATimes.com. From the release:
Co-authored by brothers Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky, Lakers Blog provides not only original reporting but also opportunities for lively interaction with readers. The Kamenetzkys are regular contributors to ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. Eariler this year they co-authored Fishing on the Edge, the autobiography of Mike Iaconelli, the bad boy of the bass fishing world, who won the Bassmaster Classic in 2003. Located at http://www.latimes.com/lakersblog, the Kamenetzky's web log offers a fresh take on the Lakers every morning, with updates throughout the day. This initiative, undertaken with the Sports Department of the Los Angeles Times, demonstrates the newspaper's commitment to being an innovator on the Internet, creating reporting positions exclusively for the web on hot topics.
I've queried the Times on whether the blog posts will be edited in advance and by whom. (The answer is yes, they are subject to editing in a joint effort of the Sports desk and the website.) The brothers' first posts are up, with a flurry of comments. I've corrected the release's misspelling of Kamenetzky, so that it will be right in the LAObserved database. And yes, it's unusual for a big paper like the Times to pay outside freelancers to write their blogs, but it's probably the coming thing.