I haven't been reading a lot of the Cincinnati Post's Reds blog since Marc Lancaster has left. I mean it's still in my feedreader, but I've kind of tended to skim over it so far this spring training, because it's changed quite a bit.
I really enjoy reading all of the other Reds blogs (I have all the ones I know about in my Bloglines account), but Lancaster's site was the most useful to me for quite a while. That's not a knock on any other Reds blogger, it's just simple acknowledgement that Lancaster had better access to breaking news than any of us by virtue of his job with the Post. I can't count (and probably wouldn't want to know) how many Red Reporter posts in the last year started off with "From Marc:".
That being said, I realize I have a somewhat unique take on all of this, and that the Post might be better served with a more conversational, community oriented blog. C. Trent seems to be heading in that direction, but man from here it's looking like a trainwreck so far.
The guy's doing an awesome job in certain respects. He's linking out to other bloggers, something Marc never really did. He responds to comments pretty frequently. He posts frequently.
However, I'm amazed that comments like this one are allowed to stay up. The platform Cincinnati.com uses for it's blogs absolutely allows its authors to moderate comments, so it's squarely on C. Trent that garbage like the above is still live.
You'll generally find a slower breed at "official" message boards and websites, because the effort level is less to post there. Redszone is always going to be a more intelligent place to discuss the Reds than the official board at Reds.com, because you're showing a certain level of competence to even find Redszone in the first place. The same goes for blogs like Red Reporter, Red Hot Mama, Church of Baseball and so forth versus a blog owned by the Cincinnati Post.
I'm willing to cut C. Trent some slack because of the above, but not too much.
I'm a big believer that once you get to a certain level the readers carry a site. Red Reporter is a perfect example of that. C. Trent probably oughta think about the environment that he's promoting by letting idiots like the aboved linked commenter continue to post. However, it's possible that he just doesn't care because he's going to be out of a job in the next year, but he should, because like I said above, there are a lot of things he's doing right, better than Marc even. I'm sure there are a ton of papers in this country that'd jump to hire a sports reporter with a successful background involving new media. The whole allowing idiotic comments and obsessing over girls in the stands probably oughta stop though, before it burns him.