It's been an exhilarating few weeks here on the Capitol Square in downtown Madison, something I don't need to tell the thousands who have spent even a little time down here, either in person or vicariously through our live blog.
When we started covering the protests and other news from the Capitol via the live blog on Feb. 14, we thought it would maybe last a few days to a week. But we ended up going for three weeks until we realized that we couldn't sustain it much longer. But almost immediately after we shut it down, we started hearing from several readers who were sad to see it go.
The problem with the live blog is that it requires nearly constant monitoring to approve comments from the readers, which is its most valuable component. We plug in a bunch of Twitter feeds and, of course, Isthmus writers are given their own keys to the back door, but the software requires someone to sit and approve everything that comes in from other sources. When a lot is going on, we can justify the commitment of resources to do that. But when the action tapers off, as it has this week, it makes less sense.
So we're going to try letting the blog run and turn comments on or off, depending on whether someone is around to monitor them. We'll look to have them open in the morning, around the lunch hour and maybe again in the late afternoon. Other than that, the Twitter feeds and approved panelists will be the only content sources. If that doesn't work, we'll have to try and figure out something else.
Find the live blog, along with all of our coverage of the budget repair bill, Capitol protests and related events at TheDailyPage.com/walker. Please let us know what you think!
