Trouble at Saclights.com

OK, really, I'm not obsessed with this, but it just gets more interesting.

Saclights.com, the Bee's new interactive community website that was due to launch this week, appears to be getting a retooling, and will not be launching this week, as we reported earlier.

My spies - and they are EVERYWHERE, as good spies need to be - tell me that Saclights.com has "issues": it seems that top management went a bit, uh, wobbly when confronted with the slogan for the new site: "Places to go. People to do." We thought it was cute, maybe even a little funny, and relatively daring for the famously cautious paper. But if you visit the site, you'll see that that slogan has disappeared, perhaps for fear of...well, of offending someone.

On the Internet. Can you imagine?

Personally, I found the ham handed writing of the placeholder site far more offensive - "We and you provide the – photos, videos, event listings, blogs, reviews and more. SacLights is into what you're into (sic)" - and that still hasn't been corrected. But apparently, the party this Thursday at Whiskey Wild will be a bit subdued, since the party is no longer a "launch" of the site.

Another issue is that Bee management is said to be having a hard time with the concept of an "unmoderated" forum that Saclights.com was originally (supposedly) intended to be. And this is where I, again, sympathize with The Bee: How do you appear to be letting go, getting in the swing, getting with the program, and still control everything you possibly can? The Internet is vast and relatively uncontrolled, and no one is going to get that genie back in the bottle.

Again, this is all second-hand, and I can't vouch for it. But that's the beauty (as well as the vast, deep, terrifying ugliness) of the Internet: You hear stuff, you pass it on. For what it's worth.