I’ve gotten a few calls and emails about the changes on the blog, so here is the deal: The editors merged my blog, Inside Politics, with Political Blotter, the blog of my colleague Josh Richman at the Oakland Tribune.

Josh and I often wrote about some of the same issues and the joint page allows us to better coordinate our political coverage and gives our readers political news in one place. (It also means the site won’t go dead when one of us goes on vacation.)

I must agree, though, that the generic government buildings picture at the top lacks appeal. I will be asking the web designers — in their spare time — to come up with something more distinctive.

So, enjoy double the politics on this newly merged blog and know that I have no plans to slack off just because Josh is sharing the load.

If anything, I’ll have to work harder to keep up — his blog received a lot more clicks than mine did! (Okay, so the name of my paper isn’t as Google-known as Oakland. People ask, when I tell them the name of my paper, Contra Costa Times, “Are you a Central American newspaper?”)