The Knoxville News Sentinel recently issued a call for bloggers to help cover the upcoming KNS v. Knox County Commission trial. The reasoning was that because the newspaper is the plaintiff, they needed independent coverage.

Jack McElroy announced on his blog [1] that three bloggers have been selected. They are Rich Hailey [2], David Oatney [3], and Russ McBee [4]. From McElroy's description, it sounds as though they will mostly be covering the coverage, not necessarily the trial itself (maybe Russ can elaborate on how that will work).

Anyway, its an interesting experiment in citizen journalism. I'm not sure a newspaper has ever done anything like this before. Once again, the KNS is way out front in working with the the local blogger community.