Was it just my imagination, or did I see a round of "they just don't get it" hooting aimed at the Houston Chronicle when Dwight Silverman asked members of the public to become Chronicle "passion" bloggers?
Well, Jeff Jarvis points out that they're up and running now, and the topics are an interesting collection: Cooking. Motherhood. Scrapbooking. Pets. Guns, poker, cars and tech toys.
Some of those topics are chronically (no pun intended) underreported by newspapers. For that matter, they're not the kind of thing that most A-list bloggers think important, either. But they are the kind of thing that real people care about.
Now comes the test: Will the community step up and engage? Or does the newspaper's "we write, you read" brand stifle the interaction before it gets started?
Personally, I favor a more open table and a more conversational, less structured approach than these official, yet unofficial bloggers, but this one small step is an important move toward closing the gap between the lives real people live and the journalism we practice.