I’m working on some content today for beatblogging.org about the moderation of user comments on stories and blogs.

I need your help.

How does you news organization handle these moderating duties? Are your comments moderated or unmoderated? If they are moderated, who does it? Do your writers and bloggers interact with posters?

What has worked well for you? What hasn’t worked well?

For point of referrence, this blog has a policy were everyone’s first comment is automatically held for moderation. If it is deemed appropriate, subsequent comments are not held for moderation. There are some other guidelines that garner why a post might get held for moderation as well.

It has worked well for me so far, especially since I actively moderate this blog myself and interact with readers.

“I’m convinced that newspapers need to rise up and take responsibility not just for the quality of the news, but for the quality of the conversation,” - Monia Guzman.

Instead of complaining that comments sections on newspaper Web sites are worthless, newspapers need to start actively cultivating conversations. The Web is about community, and communities are about conversations. Are newspapers in or out?

Head over to BeatBlogging.Org to read and listen to my full interview with Guzman, the first online reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Part of her job is to cultivate and analyze conversations on the PI’s Web site. Shouldn’t ever newspaper have at least one journalist who does this?

At BeatBlogging.Org I have noticed that many of our most successful beat bloggers have strong communities around their beats.

Community can trump content, but the best sites combine great content with a great community. Community is what makes people want to come back to a Web site over and over again. Ask an active Twitter user how often they are on Twitter each day. They might be embarrassed to tell you.

But it’s all about the community. A strong community, however, takes cultivation. It takes a moderator who is willing to mix it up with the people formally known as the audience.

That can be a scary suggestion for many journalists, but one-way communication will not build a community. And the Web is all about communities.

The SciGuy Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle sometimes has posts garner more than 100,000 page views. Not bad for a blog dedicated to a less-than-controversial topic like science (unlike political blogs, which are easy to generate traffic to). From the start, Berger has striven to build a community that people wanted to come back to everyday.

I strongly recommend you listen to my audio interview with Berger about building a community and forward it around your newsroom. There is no shame in stealing someone’s successful ideas, and you’ll find many successful ideas over at BeatBlogging.Org on how to innovate on the Web.

Some tips for building community:

1. Read and respond to comments on blog posts — At first, Berger tried to respond to every one he could. The more he responded, the more other people responded. He was the catalyst for two-way communication taking off on his blog. A nice side effect is that his presence in the comments section helps keep the comments more on topic and civil. People are less willing to say outrageous things if they know the author is reading — and judging — their posts.
2. Think outside of the box — When Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth came out, Berger took six readers to go see it. He took three skeptics and three people who believed in global warming or who were neutral. After they all viewed the film, they had a discussion about what they saw and if the film had changed their views. Berger then transcribed the interview and put it on his blog, and some of it ended up in the print edition. It was a smashing success.
3. Ask for user input — If you’re serious about two-way communication, you should actively court user opinion. This can be as simple as ending blog posts with questions. Or it can be more in-depth like making online surveys for your users to take on big topics.
4. Some of your users know more than you — This is one reason why some beat blogs allow guest bloggers. Kent Fischer covers the Dallas Independent School District, and many of his readers work for the district. Some of those people probably more about the ins and outs of the district than he does. So during the slow summer months, he is asking some of them to guest blog. Allowing users to hold the conch every now and then can be very empowering for them. It’s a great way to let them know that you value their opinions.

Asking if blogging is journalism is like asking if desktop publishing is journalism.

The answer is sometimes. Both are just publishing platforms.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

At BeatBlogging.Org you’ll find many examples of journalists using blogging and other online tools to take their beat reporting to the next level. But most blogs are much truer to the original “Web log” concept than actual platforms for journalism.

Most bloggers just want to share their thoughts, feelings and lives with the world. Some, however, use blogging to take their beat reporting to the next level.

Can you imagine tailoring your reporting to fit a space dictated by a medium and not by the actual story?

Unreal. Imagine a world in which you write as much or as little as needed. Have one photo to go with a story? Have 500? Want to link to other sites, documents, databases and content?

That’s the power of the Web. That’s the power of blogging your beat.

The beat blog killed the news hole.

A lot of journalists got into this business because they like to tell stories.

I think that’s one fundamental reason why so many journalists have a hard time adapting to the changing news landscape. For me, it was never about the story — it was always about the information and news.

So, if the format changes, it doesn’t really bother me. I’m not married to the format or the medium. I’m not here to weave intricate narratives and tell stories.

In fact, I’m not very good at telling oral stories. But I can tell you a lot of facts, figures and information.

This post was brought on by two things. First, the other night I was getting some drinks with some journalists and one said, “I’m not a journalist. I’m a storyteller.” He talked about how he had trouble keeping his stories short and didn’t like taking out quotes and information for brevity.

Obviously, his work was more for himself than for his readers. That’s does not serve our readers well, and it certainly doesn’t help journalism.

The second part of this post was inspired by a post by Howard Owens, “Not all information needs to be crafted into a story:”

Storytelling, whether written or visual, then becomes something that is more about serving your own ego than serving your readers.

So check your ego, whether writing or shooting, and give people useful or entertaining information in an accessible package.  Save the storytelling for when you really have a story to tell.

A lot of journalism seems to be ego driven. Some journalists report on what they want to cover, in the mediums they want to report in. It has very little to do with what people actually want.

But we’re in a business. We have to produce a product that people want. And most people just don’t read the whole story (thanks to Owens for the link):

But here’s the thing: journalists have always been far more entranced by ‘the story’ than audiences. Less than a quarter of newspaper readers claim to read to the end of a story, even one they’re interested in … and of those, over two thirds don’t read every word.

Yes, sometimes journalism is storytelling, but as Owens notes, we should save the storytelling for when we have really good stories to tell. I see so many feature, anecdotal and other non-news ledes on stories that are really just news stories.

Let me tell you something: I have stopped reading a lot of news stories because I didn’t want to put up with another boring feature lede on a news story. I wanted the news, and I wasn’t willing to wait for some journalist’s ego to go by. And I’ve read some great non-news ledes and they were usually on great feature stories.

If you’re a storyteller, it’s no fun to have to truncate your stories. Is it really a good story then? Is blogging a good storytelling medium? Probably not.

But if you’re in the business of providing facts, figures, information — news — you’ll find blogging and Web journalism to be amazing. The Web (and its mobile cousin) provide a great deal of immediacy and depth that print never could. The Internet is an awesome vehicle for information.

Too many journalists think of themselves as storytellers and not as journalists. People ultimately want journalism so they can be informed. I think if we concentrate on making journalism that people want, we’ll find ourselves and our industry in much better shape.

And sometimes people want great stories, but let’s not force every news item into the storytelling format.

Over at BeatBlogging.org, I have a post about how “Beat Blogging allows reporters to concentrate on core reporting”:

When writing for the print edition, reporters often have to spend large amounts of time getting “man on the street” quotes from random people to flush out stories.

Not with blogging. That’s what the comment section of each blog post is for. That frees up a reporter to focus on his or her core job — reporting.

Example: Let’s say I’m an education reporter and the latest budget for a school district I am covering is announced. The story would detail the new budget with regards to the previous one, any cuts or additions, what the super superintendent thinks, perhaps a school board contact and maybe a few comments from teachers. It all really depends on how much the budget has changed.

But most editors would say that’s not the full story. They would want to know what “real people” think about the new budget. An editor would tell that reporter to call up random parents, until he or she has some quality quotes. The problem is those comments often take a long time to obtain:

Kent Fischer of the Dallas Morning News estimates that he used to spend upwards of 80% of his time getting those quotes to appease his editors for the print edition. His blog and beat are on the Dallas Independent School District, and his editors always wanted a parent’s voice or some other readers thoughts in his stories.

Fischer called that kind of reporting “contrived.” He had to fish around for quotes from random people, which would often eat up precious hours of his day that he could have used to report on more topics.

Often times those comments really are contrived. I know it, you know it — heck any reporter knows it. How many of those parents that would be contacted would have really looked over the full budget or had time to digest what had just been announced? Not many.

But that’s the beauty of using a blog to beat report. Anyone can leave a comment on a blog voicing his or her concerns or approval of the latest budget. This means a lot more than the few parents normally quoted in a print story can have a voice. Anyone can have a voice now — parents, students, teachers, etc.

It gets better. People can respond to each other, have a dialogue and form a community in the comment section of a blog. Often a story can come alive in the comments section where people begin to really digest and discuss what has happened.

And blogging also allows reporters to link to relevant content — like say the budget and other documents about school spending. Print could never do that.

Beat Blogging is about making reporting better and more modern. And wouldn’t being able to spend more time reporting and less time trolling for random comments make your reporting better?

You can read my full post on this subject here.

I’ve spent the last two years producing journalism in a myriad of formats and the last year arguing for ways to modernize and make relevant journalism in the 21st century.

I’ve argued for reinventing journalism. I’ve argued for journalists to let go of everything they’ve ever known.

Ultimately, informing people is my passion. I care deeply about journalism. I hope that’s what you’ve taken home from my blog over the past year.

I don’t care so much what medium or what form it takes. I just care about giving people information. I just want to make journalism better than it is.

I’ve been presented with a great opportunity to do just that, which is why I’m joining the Beat Blogging project with NYU’s PressThinker, Jay Rosen. Together we’re trying to discover how beat reporters are pushing the practice of journalism using Web tools like blogging and social networking.

Jay is one of those professors who gets it. He understands that journalism needs to change, and he has actively been pursuing ways to modernize journalism with projects like NewAssignment.Net, AssignmentZero.com, OffTheBus.Net and, of course, BeatBlogging.Org. It’s an honor to get to work with someone who has dedicated his career to improving journalism.

This project gives me the opportunity to do just that: improve the practice by adapting it better to the Web. It’s something I really believe in. And when I believe in something, I give it my all.

David Cohn did a fantastic job of getting this project rolling. But now it’s his time to push the practice of journalism further with his start-up Spot.Us. David is the kind of person journalism needs more of — smart, dedicated, innovative and, most of all, entrepreneurial. He got the Knight Foundation to give him $340,000 for his innovative idea.

David knows the future of journalism will look nothing like the past. He is actively working to make journalism better. We all need to be.

I’ve been out of college for two years, working to produce content that people care about. But now I can finally say my career has begun, because I’ll get to spend everyday working on the next phase of journalism, adapting the core practice of journalism — reporting — to the web.

That’s what Beat Blogging is all about.  Right now, there are beat reporters rethinking what it means to be a journalist. They are using new tools to do their jobs quicker and more effectively, while also engaging their communities better. Those are the journalists we want to highlight.

Join me as I scour the World Wide Web for the people who are pushing the practice of beat reporting. It promises to be an informational and wild ride.

P.S. Check out Jay’s post about Beat Blogging, where he looks back at the project six months in. Jay lays out how the project has gone and what the future will hold.

After cooling down and thinking about the situation more, I’ve got some new thoughts.

The Associated Press is in bind, with very few good options. AP makes money off of selling their content for someone else to publish, which is quite different than a media organization like The New York Times. The Times makes the vast majority of its money off of advertising.

The Times doesn’t have to charge for content and, in fact, doesn’t online. Having blogs like The Drudge Retort (the dumbest and most unoriginal blog concept ever, by the way) link to Times’ content, directly contributes to the Times’ bottom line. The powers that be at the Times probably don’t mind people taking short excerpts of their content in exchange for links.

But linking doesn’t directly contribute to the bottom line for the AP. The AP only makes money when they sell their content for someone else to repurpose. Perhaps bloggers will need to treat wire service content different than other content.

In the end, I think the AP should have left well enough alone. The Drudge Retort is not worth their time, and that blog doesn’t need AP content to survive or thrive. If I was going to risk a public relations nightmare (and that’s what this whole situation ultimately has been), I would have gone after a bigger, more insidious target.

Nobody can deny that lifting entire works, or large parts of a work, without compensation is wrong. But to challenge the Fair Use Doctrine over excerpts is a very poor position to be in for a company that needs freedom of speech to survive. Someone will have to decide what is Fair Use and what is copyright infringement. That someone should ultimately be legislators or judges — not journalism organizations.

If I were the AP, I would have handled this behind closed doors, without “heavy-handed” takedown notices (the AP’s words, not mine). I would have said, “look, our content is different than other media content on the Web; we need to talk about what is and what isn’t appropriate when it comes to our content.” I would have approached it as a conversation, instead of attacking bloggers for “breaking the law” (the Fair Use Doctrine is very murky, by the way).

The AP’s original actions were overly reactionary, kind of like my original post on this subject. That’s why I’m here looking at this issue from the other side. I understand AP’s dilemma, but I think they found the worst possible way to approach this issue.

Although, judging by how much of the journalism and blogging communities are reacting, maybe my original post was too kind. It’s a shame that the AP has not shown any real Web-savvyness and, honestly, might be threatening its own future. This isn’t the first time, either.

You have to pick your battles, and this was a poor battle to pick.

Innovation in College Media has an interview with me up right now if you want to find out more about what and how I think.

I will leave you with a small preview of the interview. This sums up what I think well:

And if you want to make journalism better — truly foment change — you have to believe there is no idea too crazy to succeed. Journalism needs dreamers. Journalism needs entrepreneurs. Journalism needs people willing to take big risks. The status quo will result in all of us losing our jobs.

And here is a little Q&A preview:

ICM: You mention that journalists need to “get and understand the Web.” Could you flesh that out a little more. Lots of students, for instance, know facebook, youtube, and the like. Is there something more to understanding “the Web”?
Thornton: It’s one of those things that if you need someone to show you how to do something or if you need to read a manual for something like YouTube or Blogger.com, you don’t really get the Web.
Anyone can use Facebook. We need people who have that entrepreneurial spirit — the people starting their own blogs, creating their own personal sites, etc. Making a MySpace page is nothing. Do you know some HTML and CSS? Can you FTP files to your site? That’s understanding the Web. And getting the Web means that you understand that the Web is an interconnected Web of people, cultures and civilizations.

Just because you can shoot video or make an audio slideshow, doesn’t mean you get that concept. Journalism needs people who understand that the Web is a community. That’s how we break out of this one-way communication paralysis in journalism. The Web allows everyone to have a voice, and many journalists — and journalism students — still don’t get that.