Kyle and Sean - Blogging style slipping into their reporting?

I was a little surprised reading Kyle Hopkins and Sean Cockerham's front page piece on Governor Palin yesterday. It was all very properly newsy until we got to the last paragraph of the page which began:

If you've been asleep all week, here's the recap:

Both these reporters work hard and the ADN has them working both as straight news guys on the print version and bloggers online. And I'm sure it's hard to keep those two roles straight. But what about the editor? Or have they decided that chatty is ok on the front page?

And Sean, after reading your article on Ashley Reed, I just called David Shurtleff to congratulate him on his promotion to campaign manager, but he assured me that Joe Hardenbrook still has that job, and that he (David) is still the press guy.

I just got the links to these stories - the Palin story and the Reed story - and I see that in the latter, Shurtleff is now listed as campaign spokesman. So how does it work now? No more corrections? You just go in and change the story? How's that going to affect the newspaper as a source of history if people can just go in and change the story whenever? Hard copy documents may not be as easy to access, but at least the stories don't change while they are on the shelf.

I want you all to understand that this is just a friendly observation. Unlike some of my blogging compatriots, I recognize that the ADN's financial uncertainties are putting a strain on everyone there. I appreciate that they put up a lot of good sources and give links to court documents saving me the trouble of having to look them up myself. These are good guys doing good work under difficult circumstances. But the issue about changing the record IS an important issue.

On this blog, I've set up a rule for myself that if I'm making minor spelling and typo corrections, or cleaning up the language of a sentence without affecting the content, I don't leave tracks that I've made changes. But if I'm making substantive corrections - like correct identification of someone's job title - I strikeout the old language and put the new language in with [brackets]. That let's my readers know that I've gone in and made changes. The ADN has a corrections box, but although they fixed this online, it didn't show up in the corrections in today's paper.