We're newspaper people. We get excited when things happen. Today, for example, is a good news day: A fire, a sinkhole and a city man who dies in prison.

All horrible things, but things that must get covered.

When nothing happens, we sit around and scratch our heads and say "what should we FOI today?" Which isn't necessarily bad, because with Freedom of Information requests, we get the good stuff.

Just look at what the Hartford Courant got today by asking to see all e-mails sent and received by East Hampton Town Manager Jeff O'Keefe. We wrote our own brief story about it, and plan to follow up, but we have nowhere near the staff that the Courant has. Sifting through 8 months worth of e-mails takes time.

It's ironic that when things happen, they all happen at once. And they always happen on Sundays.

We only have three people working Sundays, and they are responsible for getting the paper out - both news and sports, as well as keeping the website updated. So when a big Sunday like today happens, we scramble to get everything covered.

After I wrote something up about the O'Keefe e-mails this morning, I saw on Twitter that a police car in Cromwell had been swallowed by a sinkhole. Then I got a press release from the Department of Corrections saying an inmate had taken his own life in prison. Where's he from? Middletown, of course. Had to write something up on that quickly to put on our website.

While posting that to Twitter, I saw that an asphalt refinery in Portland was on fire - it started early this morning. At this point, it was time to make some phone calls.

We now have a reporter on the way to the scenes in Portland and Cromwell. We will also follow up more on the O'Keefe e-mail situation. Even though the Courant beat us to the story, we have been covering it all along and have a more complete picture of what's going on. Another staff member armed with a camera is heading out to take pictures of the Portland fire - apparently it will take a while for officials to clear that scene.

It's hard when everything happens on a Sunday, but we do the best we can to bring you the local news. And, as always, we welcome the support from the community. We always welcome news tips, story ideas and submitted photos. Keep it coming!

I haven't had my new iPad for long enough yet to learn to love it.

Most people rave about the iPad, including George Gombossy from CTWatchdog, whom I had coffee with last month. I got mine as part of the JRC ideaLab, where 18 company members were chosen to test out new tools and see how we can utilize them in covering our local communities.

I've also received a Netbook, which I had never expected to be my new best friend, but it is. The Netbook comes with its own wireless card, so while a co-worker drove us down to Yardley, Pa., this week for a meeting, I was able to check my e-mail, look up directions and monitor comments at www.middletownpress.com.

On primary election night, I sent it out with a reporter who was going to cover Linda McMahon's campaign in Cromwell, and the reporter absolutely loved it too. It is small, lightweight and quick to load. Perfect for filing stories from the field.

The iPad circulated around the office for the past couple of days, and I let everyone who wanted to use it have about 15-20 minutes to play with it to see if they could come up with a good use of it. I'm still trying to figure out how it could best serve us at The Middletown Press and how we could use it to better serve our readers.

It is definitely easier to read online newspapers on the iPad than it is on an iPhone, and some day soon I hope we will have an application for The Middletown Press to run on both the iPhone and the iPad, but I'll leave it up to the tech guys to figure that out.

One co-worker realized that while using the Google Earth application and letting the iPad detect your location, the little machine actually tells you exactly what part of the building you are in and it will move with you as you walk around the building. Pretty neat.

Next week as I go down to Yardley again for another meeting, I will be receiving my ideaLab iPhone, I've been told. I've heard those things change your life forever, and you will never go back to using a regular cell phone once you've had an iPhone.

Again, I've been set the task to figure out how all these new tools can help us gather news and better serve our readers. The only thing I know so far that I want to try with the iPhone is to stream live from a local meeting directly to our website, so readers can follow along what's happening in real time.

What do you think we should try with our new tools? Leave a comment below.

The Journal Register Company, the owners of The Middletown Press, has entered into a partnership with GrowthSpur. This partnership will provide local bloggers with the tools and training to become successful self-publishers.

With an initial launch in the Philadelphia region, Journal Register Company and GrowthSpur will work with blogging networks to grow news coverage, audience and revenue for community bloggers.

“Our partnership with GrowthSpur is indicative of our commitment to our Digital First strategy,” said John Paton, Chief Executive Officer. “We recognize that news is now created and consumed in remarkably different ways. We need to partner with our audiences, our communities and others if we are to be successful.”

The partnership between the Company and GrowthSpur provides local bloggers the opportunity to market themselves to advertisers as part of a community-wide network. Bloggers who join the network will receive sales and marketing training, and have the ability to sell advertising, or receive a share of revenue from other network members. The program is open to all bloggers, regardless of sales experience.

“GrowthSpur will help both us and our content partners create robust revenue streams to keep those partnerships viable,” Paton said.

Earlier this year Journal Register Company launched a Community Media Lab training program for startup bloggers. One of them was at the New Haven Register. The Media Lab program provided training for those looking to join the growing number of diverse voices already part of established community blog networks.

“There’s an incredible amount of great local journalism coming from independent local blogs and sites, and GrowthSpur was started to provide support for this grassroots content,” said Mark Potts, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of GrowthSpur. “We’re very excited to be working with Journal Register Company on this project. We’re thrilled to be able to provide the business and advertising support for the blog networks they’re assembling. Together, we think we can create a strong new future for local journalism.”

Community bloggers who are interested in this opportunity can contact Journal Register Company at opportunities@journalregister.com or GrowthSpur at info@growthspur.com.

Today is the day for Connecticut's primary elections.

Many strong, thoughtful candidates are vying for their respective parties’ nominations for seats like governor, attorney general, secretary of the state, comptroller and for the U.S. Senate.

Several local districts are also offering primaries for the state House, the state Senate and probate judges.

If you are eligible to vote, please take the time to do so today. You may help shape Connecticut's future.

We asked and you answered!

A few weeks ago we asked our readers at middletownpress.com and in our print edition whether we should keep our syndicated "Dear Abby" feature or drop her in an effort to spend more money on local news.

While a few people seem to be very fond of Abby, most readers told us overwhelmingly to let the feature go.

"I haven't read Dear Abby in years. The reason? Most of the questions tend to be the same," one reader wrote.

"I would eliminate the Dear Abby section. I don't see how it benefits the readers at all," another one said.

"If you must lose Dear Abby, go for it," yet another one said.

So that's what we've decided to do. As of the week of Sept. 4, we will switch to "Annie's Mailbox," which is a feature our sister publication, the New Haven Register, uses. If you have any questions or concerns about this, leave a comment below or send me an e-mail at vsundqvist@middletownpress.com

Because of the increasing abuse of our online comment space, and the tough time my staff is having at trying to keep up with all the comment violators, we are once again reviewing our comment policy at middletownpress.com.

Our sister paper in Torrington, The Register Citizen, switched to comment moderation a month or so ago. This means that comments no longer go up immediately, but that someone on staff has to review every single comment before it gets posted.

My concern is that this will significantly slow down people's discussions. We would need to have a staff member review comments at least every 10-15 minutes in order for this to be effective, and I have yet to figure out how to set a schedule for this so that it doesn't affect all the other work we have to do. Or should we make it one person's job to solely monitor comments all day long?

We are also thinking about combining our web resources with The Register Citizen and the New Haven Register to see if we can have a few people who monitor comments for all three sites.

I do believe a switch of some sort is needed at this point in order to gain back some credibility in our online space. What do you think? Please comment below.