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Austin American-Statesman Embraces "Citizen Journalism" with Launch of Local Blogging Community

The Statesman is One of the First Major U.S. Dailies to Offer Community Blogging for Compelling Local News and Opinion

AUSTIN, Texas — September 12, 2005 — The Austin American-Statesman, a Cox newspaper and Central Texas' leading daily newspaper, and Pluck Corp. today announced that The Statesman is using Pluck InSite Blogging to provide a free community blogging service on the Statesman's web properties, including www.statesman.com and www.austin360.com. The new service allows Austinites to create and host their own blogs where they can write, edit and report on local events and topics of personal interest. In turn, the community drives the development of local content while adding to the Statesman sites' traffic, revenue and value to the region.

The new Statesmanblogs.com and Austin360blogs.com allow local citizen bloggers to build content and post photos around Austin events, sports teams, schools, news, and politics. The online venue enables Central Texans to take part in the reporting process, helping to build unique and compelling content for their neighborhoods and the greater Austin area. Blogging is initially categorized across 12 different topics, including the upcoming Austin City Limits music festival.

The Statesman's blogging sites are powered by Pluck InSite Blogging, a fully-managed, hosted solution that allows publishers and portals to quickly build branded blogging services into their web sites. Pluck InSite Blogging helps create vibrant, interactive communities of citizen bloggers, generating valuable content while ultimately increasing page views and time on site.

"The Statesman and statesman.com are the places Austinites go to when they want information and news about their community that is relevant to their lives. Blogging will now give us the opportunity to tap in to the citizens as a resource for information and insight into the stories that make Austin the interesting city it is," said Jim Debth, general manager of statesman.com. "Pluck InSite Blogging lets us build a community publishing extension to our site, providing another way for folks in Austin to find and discuss news and events important to them."

Cox Newspapers has also licensed and will be deploying Pluck InSite RSS for personalized news aggregation. The new Austin American-Statesman community blogging services can be found at www.statesmanblogs.com and www.austin360blogs.com.

About the Austin American-Statesman

The Austin American-Statesman is the leading daily newspaper in central Texas, reaching more than 670,200 readers each week. Its family of websites — including statesman.com and austin360.com — has over 375,000 registered users and over 18 million page views per month. The Statesman brands are central Texas' top news, entertainment and information sources, reaching 3 out of 4 adults in the Austin area each week.

About Pluck Corp.

Pluck Corporation transforms how end-users and Internet publishers consume and create information online. Providing RSS, Blogging and Community Search software and related services, Pluck helps its customers leverage the open content model that has emerged as the cornerstone for Web 2.0 services. The privately held company is based in Austin, Texas with funding from Austin Ventures and Mayfield. More information on Pluck offerings can be found at www.pluck.com.

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Austin American-Statesman and Cox Newspapers Inc. are trademarks of Cox Newspapers Inc. Pluck and Pluck InSite are trademarks of Pluck Corp. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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