The Winston-Salem Journal just launched a new Harry Potter "blog" called the Muggle Report.  I put quotes around the word blog because I really don’t know if I’d call this thing a blog.  I’d lean more towards calling it a micro-site rather than a blog for two simple reasons:

1. It doesn’t have an interactive feel to it.  No comments enabled, at least that I could find, although they do have entries from a contest they ran asking kids to write an article predicting how the book series would end.  That’s pretty cool but not really a function of the "blog".
2. To me a blog is something more than a static information site.  It usually reflects the personality of the folks posting information and has a dialog (see above) within its walls.  This site feels like a one-off tied to a big event (the release of the last Potter book and the release of the latest Potter movie).  I suspect that it will have a short life and will then be archived, which to me says its more of a special interest site.  A real world analogy would be the difference between a magazine that is run in every Sunday paper and a special insert like the Pro Football preview that is inserted in the Sunday paper at the beginning of the football season.

Now is it that big a deal what they call it?  Probably not, but just like I wouldn’t call Time magazine a book I wouldn’t call this site a blog.  Of course if it grows legs and keeps going, with the writers and readers engaging in a constant dialog about all things Potter (think of it as a Potter Book Club debate) then it could definitely be termed a blog. 

Blog or no blog, I’m still left wondering why no comments?  I’m willing to bet they’d get a bunch of traffic from that younger audience that every paper in America is pursuing.  They might even get their average reader age south of the AARP line.