Editorial:

We’re doing something new and exciting at the Daily Pilot and our sister newspapers in Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach. It’s a blog that we are launching called O.C. Now.

All of us reporters and editors at Times Community Newspapers in Orange County will be blogging on this site. It is designed to give our respective readers a “big picture” of what’s happening in the cities covered by the Daily Pilot, Huntington Beach Independent and Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot, and elsewhere in the county.

The O.C. Now blog, which will go live this week, will carry blurbs of words and pictures linked to breaking news stories, photos, interesting tidbits and side notes about stories we’re working on, and anything that crosses a reporter’s path that could interest you readers. It’s going to be a stew of information. And the site, which is framed with orange trim, will look fabulous.

Of course, we’ve been blogging individually for more than a year, and we’ve been tweeting, posting stuff on Facebook and getting involved in every kind of online outlet there is. But this is a different way to reach readers.

The print edition of the Daily Pilot will still be wholly devoted to Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar and UC Irvine. News generated from here in Newport-Mesa now will become part of a broader view.

Readers soon can log on at www.theocnow.com and get a picture of the region. The material will come from our reporters and those reporting for our new partner, the Orange County Local News Network. OCLNN will cover Irvine and Dana Point, for starters.

OCLNN, scheduled to launch Feb. 2, is part of an Internet-based journalism start-up out of San Diego that’s established bureaus in San Diego County and southwest Riverside County. The staffers of its Orange County bureau just moved into our building at 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa.

OCLNN could have been one of our competitors. But we recognized that, in these troubled times for American journalism, few journalistic enterprises can survive entirely on their own without helping one another.

We see this partnership with the Local News Network folks, who’ll be sharing their content with us, including news copy that could be published in the Pilot’s print edition, as an exciting new avenue for our reporting.

That can only help readers — and the business of journalism.