The magnetic Albion v Cardiff blog

There I was, happily putting on my overcoat at the end of a long Thursday, when an angry email complaint arrived.

In short, it read: 'Will you discipline your WBA reporter for racial abuse of the Welsh on his blog.'

I immediately clicked onto Chris Lepkowski's blog. Provocative, I thought, but funny and more than allowable as column-style footy opinion.

But then I read the 107 responses flying in.... they started calmly, but soon became a nasty war of words between the Midlands and South Wales, with rude sheep being the politest subjects aired.

Seriously, one or two posts were threatening, others very derogatory towards women and some most disrespectful of recent tragedies.

On the phone immediately. In came the multi-medi editor for an hour of editing and rejecting, and I posted my own messages trying to calm the waters. Plus emails to complainants who contacted me directly to defend a blog that I felt was not a prblem (although some of the responses it triggered were!)

But what a great magnet for readership, attracting 100+ surfers who'd possibly not arrived on our .net site before.

Bloggers need to be careful, of course. If you read the entirety of Chris' blog and responses you'll see how the spat started and ended (though the worst messages are now spiked).

And we editors thought we had problems with controlling what goes in print!

You can read the episode here: http://blogs.birminghammail.net/westbromwichalbion