A commenter at The Big Question — the Star Tribune blog founded by Eric Black — says on “the BQ,” who’s gonna run the BQ? With Black’s announcement Friday that he’s taking a voluntary buyout and the scarcity of posts recently by his blogging partner, D.J. Tice, readers have good reason to wonder.

In a post today, Black said he’d make a statement as soon as possible, about my bloggerly future and that of the Big Question.” But a big question mark hangs over the fate of the Star Tribune blog: According to Tice, a decision about it is “still somewhat up in the air.”

He’s optimistic it’ll go on, however. “It certainly is our hope and intention to continue the Big Question,” he said. “There’s a slot on the organizational table that’s assigned to the Big Question, and that remains.”

But who will fill that role remains to be seen. Tice’s byline has been noticeably absent from the site for some time. His name last appeared May 23 in a joint post with Black that totaled 19 words, and his most recent solo post is dated May 3. Some have speculated that Tice, the Strib’s team leader for governmnt and politics, was removed from his blogging position after he linked a story about Al Franken’s off-color jokes to the site of a Republican blogger behind Minnesota Democrats Exposed.

In response to complaints from Democrats, Strib readers’ representative Kate Parry wrote that the blog is “a big risk to the newspaper’s image as a fair and unbiased source for news about government and elections.” Tice disagreed with Parry’s assessment and said his absence had nothing to do with the story. His role overseeing coverage of the just-closed legislative session made blogging difficult, he said. And looking forward to the Republican convention and a presidential one, he expects scheduling conflicts to persist. Tice’s duties will also expand as he begins managing the paper’s Washington, D.C., bureau later this month.

While Tice is vocal about The Big Question’s successes, he wonders how the work of blogging will get done. And his forecast begs the question about how high the blog is prioritized in the minds of newspaper managers.

“I don’t think there’s any sense at all that the Big Question lacks support or it’s not valued by the leadership of the paper,” he said. “The great challenge is that we’re reducing staff, and we have a lot of critical jobs that need to be done. And we need now to reorganize in a way that gets the highest priority things done in the best possible way — and we just don’t know how that’s going to shake out.”