Announces two tiers of online access: Stuff produced by Globe reporters at bostonglobe.com, which you'll have to pay to see, and something at the current boston.com that sounds like G online with a bit of breaking daily news that happened too late to get into the paper. Plus more exciting pop-up ads:

BostonGlobe.com, with the goal of creating a "lean-back experience" for readers, will have a simpler, newspaper-like design with less intrusive ads, he said.

Although they're still called "Your Town:"

• Allston-Brighton
• Back Bay
• Dorchester
• Jamaica Plain
• South Boston
• South End

The Globe reports on itself, quotes a statement from a Globe spokesman that boston.com has turned off a business directory until it can discover how the escort ads highlighted by local blogger Dave Copeland (note to boston.com readers: here's the link you won't find there) got into its system.

The Globe will launch a South Boston Your Town site on Sept. 9, Mike Wallace at boston.com tweets. This will be boston.com's first neighborhood site in Boston.

Somehow, that all makes sense. The Globe talks to some of the people who post replies to its articles, although not the hard-core trollers who blame Obama for car crashes on Gallivan Boulevard. For some reason, they didn't want to be quoted for the record.

The cesspoolization of online commenting has gotten so bad, the Globe reports, "even the Chinese government has had enough."

Kimberley Isbell at Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab examines the legal issues behind the hullabaloo over the iPad RSS aggregator the Times hates because it came with Times and boston.com RSS feeds built in.

Mike Mennonno reports on being asked and then un-asked to be a voice from the community:

... Frankly, I feel a little bit like the girl who got invited to the prom as a cruel joke in one of those early '80s "After-School Specials." Or Carrie.

Oh, come on, boston.com, you're not even trying any more. Having played out the idea of "photos of people who look like other people" and "photos of dogs who look like their owners," the site is now reduced to running photos of random Boston-area pets - taken by Boston Magazine, no less.

This morning's boston.com ran this headline and subhead describing yesterday's Presidential appearance at the Republican Congressional retreat in Baltimore:

Obama, GOP exchange scoldings in rare debate
President Obama denied he was a Bolshevik, Republicans denied they were obstructionists, and both sides denied they were to blame for toxic politics. (New York Times)

Here's the headline and subhead on nytimes.com describing the same event:

Off Script, Obama and the G.O.P. Vent Politely
By PETER BAKER and CARL HULSE
President Obama attended a House Republican retreat for a robust debate on policies and politics with the opposition, a rarity in the scripted world of American politics.