Gadgetopia

USAToday is really embracing the blog. Hip Clicks (now Pop Candy) — their entertainment blog — hit the Net 14 months ago. Shortly after that they started using RSS. Then they created blogs.usatoday.com a few months back.

Now, they’ve taken all their news and have created “On Deadline,” a “real-time news blog.” Essentially, they’re going to post stories to this blog as they hit the site in other places. For instance, here’s an entire summary of the print edition of the paper, with links to dozens of the stories.

What’s interesting is that we run into the “blogs vs. wikis” argument again. What happens when there’s a huge story? On the wiki-like front page of the regular site, it can hold the top spot for as long as it likes. In a blog, it’s going to get trampled in a mad rush down the page as other stories pile on top of it. There’s more control with their front page, whereas the blog is constrained by being, well, blog-like.

(It also bears mentioning that it looks like they’re using Movable Type for their platform. I wonder what they paid for that license.)