But in journalism, it’s time for a change–big change. As you might have heard, this newspaper, along with virtually every other paper in the country, is under siege. Our whole business model is in free fall–circulation is dropping, profits are down and lots of talented people are losing their jobs. We can moan and groan about it or we can try something new.

That’s the idea behind launching the Big Picture blog. As much as I’ve loved writing a once-a-week column, the world of entertainment and pop culture is moving so fast that it’s become impossible to keep up with all the action without weighing in more often than once a week. Over the past few years, I’ve found myself addicted to reading blogs. The best ones offer a wonderfully brainy, personal and irreverent way of seeing the world. You’ll see the paper now has 40-plus blogs, with more being launched all the time.

My guess is that someday soon our blogs will be the backbone of the paper. Journalists have discovered, to our chagrin, that information is everywhere these days. But readers still crave informed analysis and lively writing, which is something we can focus on as newspapers make the transition from mass circulation entities to niche-oriented publications. So while I’ve got lots to learn about the blogging life–and will surely stumble many times along the way–I’m eager to be a part of that new conversation.

What you won’t see here are sites or feeds that do not have any unread items. In fact, Brent has taken measures to ensure that on the mobile version of NetNewsWire, the user will only see what’s important to him. Many times during our interview, Brent mentioned that he was developing this application from the perspective of the individual who had only five minutes between tasks to take a quick look at his feeds. To that end, items you’ve read will disappear from the phone in 12 hours or so, keeping what you see on your iPhone to the bare minimum of important items.

We’ve put together some photo galleries from some of the previous match ups, 1984, 1985 and 1987. For the time being though, focus on the 1987 one.

A few days ago, I had the wacky idea of putting up the coverage of the ‘87 Finals online with our archive server much like we did for the Memorial Day project. Here’s some of the articles from that series. Enjoy!

• 1987 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics, Game 1
• 1987 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics, Game 2
• 1987 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics, Game 3
• 1987 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics, Game 4
• 1987 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics, Game 5
• 1987 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics, Game 6

When I looked at the data that way, it was difficult to focus on the task at hand, knowing what each line was but separating and just looking at it as pure data helped.

Now, the project has been finished and you can view it at California’s War Dead. It’s a sobering data-driven view of the those from California who have lost their lives protecting this country. It’s something that should cause you to pause in between the BBQ’s and holiday enjoyment.

I don’t take any credit for the app though, it’s really the work of Ben and Eric. I just helped with getting some of the archived obituaries on to our Article server.

You can see people from your home town, your high school and how old you are. All of these are ways to bring the tragedy closer to you and no longer have those who have died just a name in an article.

It is these kinds of projects that brought me to the Times and I can only hope that I can help with more in the future.

I was pretty amazed to find myself being linked to last week though. It seems my post about Facebook’s new Chat application and the way they tested it hidden on the page was useful. It seems like a little thing but I’m pretty proud of it.

But Mr. Stoppelman said that the site deliberately tilts its rules to support the reviewers. “We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third,” he said.

Pretty much sums it up… I think The Guide could take some cues from that.

More on Yelp and it still holds true even from 2006.

Hmm, what if you could embed a widget that showed the lists you’ve created on The Guide?

Going along with this is Coolspotters, basically a database of celebrities and the products they use. Mike Davidson of Newsvine fame gives a good overview.

You can break it down in all sorts of data goodness from ballpark to pitch count. Ah data, the things you can do with it.