The Scoop

The governor of our fair state isn't the only one tweeting to communicate to the public. We are too.

While the governor seeks to sway public opinion, our mission is to deliver news - and lots of it.

Many reporters and newsroom staffers are tweeting information on a variety of subjects, from education and consumer news to sports and state politics. You can see a list of who's tweeting from the Sacramento Bee newsroom and follow them here.

Two of our most popular tweeters are columnist Marcos Breton and political writer Kevin Yamamura. Our Kings beat reporter, Sam Amick, is in a friendly competition with 49ers writer Matt Barrows to see who can attract the most follows. For now, Matt's in the lead with 1,148 followers, two more than Sam.

If news updates is what you want, your best bet is to follow our main Twitter feed at twitter.com/sacbee_news. More than 6,200 people are following us there, and since its inception we've tweeted more than 10,000 breaking news items and updates.

Just for fun, we've ordered our list of tweeters by those who have the most followers.

You can see it after the jump.

Let's get straight to the point. You can now decide for yourself whether you want to see comments on sacbee.com. We've added a button (see below) at the bottom of every story and blog post that allows you to turn comments on and off.

Click the button and ALL comments on ALL stories are hidden from view. Click the button again and ALL comments reappear. The site will retain your preference to hide or show comments every time you visit as long as you have cookies enabled in your browzer.

We will still be moderating those comments that are flagged as abusive by users.

Why did we do this? In an earlier reader forum, users debated the value of story comments. Some thought the comments were too crass; others fought for the ability to air their views, crass or not. Several readers wanted greater flexibility with the commenting system.

This is a first step toward giving users that flexibility. We hope to add more functionality to our commenting system, such as allowing users to block the comments of individuals that irritate them. That function is already available on our forums.

If you want to weigh in on user comments on sacbee.com, post your views to our forum on the issue.

In the meantime, the choice is yours on whether comments are part of your reading experience on sacbee.com -- or not.

In Hollywood, a heartwarming and inspirational story that captures the imagination of the audience is often called a feel-good movie. My favorite is the 1993 film "Rudy", in which an undersized college kid gives it his all to play football at Notre Dame.

At sacbee.com, we have a feel-good story of our own. Friday's article and video on Sacramentan Paul Campfield, 68, who discovered he had purchased his late mother's long-lost record collection at a Sutter Creek antiques shop, generated an outpouring of emotion among sacbee.com users.

More than 450 people have commented on the story, which was picked up by Yahoo and displayed on its home page Friday afternoon. User JudyDavis recalled working with Campfield's stepfather at a Bank of America branch in Anderson, Shasta County. "I was excited to hear about Paul's find -- what a small world!" she wrote.

Others said the story reminded them of their grandmothers, mothers and wives. "This story brings back some wonderful memories of childhood during the Second World War," daffidik wrote. "Our mother was a singer who performed with her sisters and her dad in the early years of radio. ..."

Another user, larryTheFairy, said the account of Campfield's discovery was "so much better than reading about murders, muggings and automobile accidents."

We couldn't agree more. For sacbee.com, the story has generated more than 1.8 million page views, the most ever for a single article on our site. More than 171,000 people watched the video. The package also helped propel our unique visitor count for July to a new monthly record.