Blogs and RSS are great technological innovations that have propelled the dissemination of information easier, more manageable and faster. There are a number of things that a Blog needs to have to be considered a blog. Bernie Miklasz is blogging the NCAA tournament. Well, not really.

Bernie Miklasz is one of two general sports newspaper columnists in St. Louis. We have but one daily newspaper here, so the pickings are slim.

Lately Bernie Miklasz has been blogging the NCAA tournament. Check out the page and tell me if that's a blog? It's more like a Bogus Blog.

How do you like that name? I just invented it to describe sites that call themselves Blogs, but aren't really.

Anyway, back to why this is a bogus blog. There are a number of things a site needs to have to be considered a blog. Let's walk through three of them and see how Bernie Miklasz does:

1) The Blog needs to be chronological. Do you see a way of looking at the archives of his posts? Is there an index?

• No. These things are missing on Bernie Miklasz's site as the information is basically dumped to one page. Score: 0-1.

2) The Blog needs to be written by the person directly without any editor involvement. Do you think this is happening?

• No, but I have no way of proving it. I hardly think that an editor left their hands off of his posts. At the very least they modified it typographically to fit into the page and then published it. A Blog is someone's creation and therefore should be editor free. Score 0-2.

3) The Blog needs to be syndicated. Do you see an RSS link for the blog? An ATOM link? Can you add it to My Yahoo? Bloglines?

• No. "But there is a link to an RSS feed on the bottom," you say. Yep, but that is the site's general RSS feed list that doesn't include any Blogs let along Bernie Miklasz's. Score 0-3.

Bernie Miklasz struck out.

It amazes me that in this day and age of information dissemination a company can miss the boat so profoundly; especially a media company like the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

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