The Guardian launched its exciting Comment is free group blog today. From the welcome statement:

Why are we launching it now? Because it’s obvious to us that our major competition for opinion and debate is moving online, and unless we move with it, we’re failing our journalists and future generations of readers. We need to expand and deepen the debate which takes place every day in our newspapers and for which we have an unrivalled reputation.

The site looks and feels stiff at first sight – a typical effect of transforming an old newspaper format, the opinion piece, to the web. And editor Henry makes a classic mistake by inviting reader participation, and then forgetting to answer the (pertinent) questions the readers have.