The word “blog,” as you probably already know, is Internet shorthand for “Web log,” and most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty dull. They’re like online diaries, information that probably should have been written in a book and put in a box in the back of the closet and never seen by anybody.

It’s the kind of stuff you read on MySpace pages — mildly interesting if you’re friends with the person, but if you’re not, you really couldn’t care less.

Newspaper blogs are different — at least we hope they are. This one will mostly be about what we cover and why, which oddly enough, nobody seems to understand sometimes. More on that as we go along.

Personally (and everything you read here is “personally” — it’s an opinion; in fact, it’s my opinion), I’m excited about our new Web site. It gives us the ability to do things that newspapers aren’t supposed to be able to do. Suddenly, we’re a radio station, a television station and an online scrapbook, all in one. We can bring you news virtually as soon as we know about it. We can post audio and video from news events. And coming in just a little while, you yourself, dear reader, will be able to post photos that you take and video highlight clips that you produce yourself, just like YouTube.

And you can read all the thoughts I should have written in a book and put in a box in the back of the closet.