This blog's about to get a lot bloggier

Posted by Matt Erickson November 20, 2012 at 8 a.m.

Dear Heard on the Hill readers,

Some changes are brewing here at the headquarters of your favorite KU news blog. But believe me when I say that this new brew will prove to be a more delicious and timely part of your daily news diet.

Today's Heard on the Hill will be the final edition you'll see in the form you've become familiar with over the last few years — the bullet-pointed list of news chunks, presented for your reading early in the morning, followed by nothing else the rest of the day. (Well, I guess yesterday's edition was the last one that was exactly like that; this, as you see, is more of a letter to our kind, faithful readers.)

Heard on the Hill is changing so it can get better. This blog is going to become, well, more of a blog.

The new Heard on the Hill will fire out KU news updates — of varying depth, length and frequency — throughout the day. If KU is mentioned in a national media story, a KU figure tweets something interesting, or someone tells me something I want to pass on to all of you, I can go ahead and fire it away into cyberspace.

If you're at all like me, you don't read news online once per day — you consume it in small chunks throughout the day, on your phone while you wait in the checkout line, on your computer during a lull at work or on your tablet while you lie on the couch in the evening. So why give you one big list of KU news in the morning when we can spit it out throughout the day as it happens?

Of course, change is hard to deal with for some of us. I know; I once cried as a child when I found out I'd have to switch to a different doctor's office for my allergy shots.

But the good news is that if you like to consume your Heard on the Hill goodness in one hearty meal rather than several bite-sized snacks during the day, you can just check it out at its new location, right here, at whatever time you're used to checking us out. You can just check down from the top to see all the updates we've produced since you read it last.

Our other world-class blogs at the Journal-World, including Town Talk and First Bell, will also be switching to this new, rapid-fire format.

I believe this change will better serve the newsy appetites of our readers. But if you have any thoughts you'd like to share on how the switch is going, don't be shy about letting me know. I want you to play a role in what this blog becomes.

To keep up, you can bookmark the new HotH headquarters page, or follow the @LJW_KU Twitter account, which will tweet out links to entries as fast as we can file them. And you'll be able to see the entries on the LJWorld.com homepage. You can expect the first update under the new format this morning.

Thanks, all, and please, don't forget to send those KU news tips to merickson@ljworld.com.

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d_prowess 6 months ago

Will the blog topics show up on the main page under the "Latest" news list like the current version does now? I will be honest and say that is the only way I actually click on your blog or the Town Topics blog. So if the updates don't show up there, I probably won't go searching for them.

merickson 6 months ago

Yes, they sure will. Right now under "Latest" you can find this post as well as a second one from this morning. And now you'll see entries show up there one by one throughout the day, with a single headline for each, rather than all at once in the morning with one big, unwieldy headline filled with semicolons.

Thanks for reading.

-Matt Erickson