USAToday has slowly been rolling out new blogs or converting existing columns to a blog format. Back in October, Tom Foremski noted that Kevin Maney was perhaps the first USAToday reporter to do so. The latest is travel reporter Ben Mutzabaugh. Looking around the USAToday site I now count four blogs:
- Kevin Maney: First post Nov 18, 2005. Kevin will continue to write his traditional column, but he will also be blogging.
- Today in the Sky by Kevin Mutzabaugh: First post Nov 28, 2005. Even though it appears the first post announcing the conversion to a blog format was on the 28th the archive shows Nov 2 as the first blog post.
- Pop Candy by Whitney Matheson: First post Nov 7, 2005 . Whitney has been a long time blogger at USAToday but it was previously done in their existing content management system for special events like the 2004 DNC.
- Will Birdie Make It? by Brigid Farrell: First post Nov 11, 2005. This blog not written by a USAToday reporter. It is written by Brigid Farrell an Olympic short track speed skater. The blog will follow her attempt to make the U.S. Olympic team. Brigid also maintains a journal on her site.
Has anybody seen any others?
All the new blogs are now run using TypePad from SixApart. All the blogs feature comments, but no trackbacks. It will be interesting to see how many other blogs USAToday will launch in the future. However, they have a long way to go to catch the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's 40+ blogs.
