Bye-bye blog: RMN editor Temple quits blogging (NOW UPDATED TO SHOW THAT THIS POST WAS WRONG! ERRONEOUS! INCORRECT! FACTUALLY FAULTY! ETC!)

The Rocky Mountain News yesterday unveiled its completely redesigned website--and the new design apparently does not include RMN editor, publisher, owner, and self-tightening tool John Temple's blog. It's gone, and the Rocky now has (count 'em) no blogs at all. Naturally, there is no mention of this on the Rocky's lovely new site.

For those of us who took a sick, twisted joy in following the Rocky's timid entry into the blogosphere earlier this year, the round-filing of Temple's blog was not exactly unexpected. For one thing, he was a noticeably unenthusiastic blogger; sometimes a week or more lapsed between posts.

For another, too many posts were of the horrible "Editor's Corner" type--blather about awards the Rocky had won (journalists honor each other constantly, of course) and its efforts at community outreach, along with Temple's abuse of pet peeves like the EEOC and, to be fair, his occasional and utterly unsurprising take on broader issues.

Pants on fire

But worst of all, Temple too often used his blog to prevaricate. This is evident in a couple of the links above, but particularly in his dealing with the editorial plagiarism flap at the Rocky in July. Reading the links will give you an overview, but basically Temple refused to call what happened plagiarism, and did not bother to investigate all the writing of the editor involved. Truly a crock.

If the above sounds like gloating--well, it is. But it's not a good thing that the Rocky can't seem to get the hang of blogging. That it--and Temple--have given up means that another potential avenue of information has been barricaded, and that the Rocky has further isolated itself from the people it claims to serve.

Oh, and Temple never even managed to get permalinks, either.

CORRECTIONAL UPDATE: Ahhh, shit. Temple's blog has reappeared. Guess I should have waited to make sure they were finished putting up the new site, and/or asked Temple, but I couldn't help myself. In very feeble defense, the blog was definitely gone from yesterday, when the new site went up, until just a little while ago. I thought that was long enough to be sure, but I should have checked.

But you know, everything in the above is still true (hey, I'm Dan Rather!), except that Temple is, in fact, still blogging, and all that guff about the Rocky "further" isolating itself.

Thanks to reader LJo for the heads-up. Yeah, thanks a lot.