Like most newspapers, we’re moving toward becoming a 24-hour newsroom by using our Web site, pressherald.com, to get breaking news to readers as it happens.

An example of this trend happened yesterday.

Our State House reporter, Paul Carrier, was pursuing two angles on tax reform. He was watching the Senate debate on the constitutional amendments. And he was reporting a story about Gov. Baldacci’s position on the proposal.

By early afternoon, Paul had a story on Baldacci. The governor wasn’t talking, according to his spokesman, and some lawmakers were criticizing his silence. Meanwhile, the Senate was preparing to take action on the bill.

Since it was likely the Baldacci story would be overtaken by events in the Senate, we posted the entire story as a “news update” around 2 p.m. That got it to readers immediately, and enabled Paul to focus on explaining the impact of the Senate debate for readers of our print edition.

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