The S-R has officially launched a new blog, The Falls with your host Shawn Vestal. It's hard to know how readership and participation will grow as we are "feeling our way through new platforms," one of the editors said. They noted that when blogs such as Huckleberries Online first launched, the newsroom was not as web-conscious and did not track their initial growth. Also related - editor Steve Smith noticed that Huckleberries host Dave F . Oliveria appears more liberal than when he first began blogging for it.

• Correction: There are 118 periodic elements, but 92 naturally occurring periodic elements, so Gary Graham had a valid number yesterday.

• Today's story on the Helium shortage is our most-read story on the web.

Sound familiar?

Calls are still coming in about the recent illness and death in the comic strip "Funky Winkerbean."

Those readers are telling the features department that the funnies page should be funny.

For Better Or For Worse has also been dealing with more serious, more nontraditionally-comic issues because the artist is taking a different approach. She is doing a hybrid strip, combining old strips with new strips. The S-R did run a Q&A, at one point, to explain this new shift.

Speaking of comic masterminds, folks also brought up the new controversial biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. the new bio has upset some of his family members because it includes talk about Schulz being depressed, anxious and grumpy.

Layout for multimedia references

There's a growing volume of multimedia it's becoming a layout and design challenge. A news brief may have oodles of multimedia, but the "refers," or blurbs that point readers to the web site to find video, audio, slideshows, etc. would fill up the news brief and make it more of a story length. Which defeats the purpose of calling it a news brief.

Yes, this is the stuff that keeps newsies up at night.

Either way, senior editor for presentation Geoff Pinnock is also looking into redesigning the web logos and "refers," boxes like the one at left.

**NOTE** "Refers" is pronounced "reefers," in case there's any confusion. Although it would explain newsroom madness, The Spokesman-Review is a drug-free zone.

---

---