SITES INTEGRATE DISCUSSION WITH NEWS

By: Karim Mostafa Message Boards Need Not Be Separate


As newspapers rethink their community publishing efforts, some
publishers are putting renewed emphasis on story feedback.
Instead of concentrating on building Web sites for community
groups, they're looking to get the community involved on the main
pages of the newspaper site -- those in the news section.

Japan Today, an English-language news site in Tokyo, has taken to
posting discussions directly below every news story, said Mark
Devlin, CEO of CrissCross KK, publisher of JapanToday.com and
Tokyo Classified.

Immediately following news stories, readers can read through
responses posted by other users, see what discussion topics are
the most popular, and then submit their own contributions.

Online since Dec. 2, 2000, Japan Today built the discussion
feature with only one programmer using Microsoft's ASP (active
server page) language. It took eight weeks to build, but the
site's been doubling page views every month, part of which Devlin
attributes to readers' responses.

Across the Pacific, The Fresno (Calif.) Bee's Web
site started adding a forum box at the end of news stories in
June 1999 and within three days the site's traffic jumped 30% and
stayed there. "Worked like a charm," said Eric Johnston, now
director of online services at sister paper The Modesto
Bee. "People took to it like ducks to water."

Fresnobee.com uses Waveshift's Webforums tool which requires very
little management, Johnston said. Earlier efforts had tried a
link on the home page to discussion forums, but that didn't
generate nearly as much traffic. Johnston believes that stories
provide inspiration to readers who will respond to something
instead of entering forums cold.

The biggest surprise and benefit was how the forums proved to be
a huge resource for the print newsroom, Johnston said. It
provided access to new sources for reporters, but he stressed
that the online division mediated by contacting posters via e-
mail to get permission before giving personal information to
reporters.

"It's a grassroots, community publishing tool that allows people
to express their opinions," said Johnston, who will be adding the
same feature to the Modesto site soon.

These efforts are a good start at integrated Web pages made up of
both content and community -- a step that online newspapers need
to take if they're going to take advantage of the online medium,
said Steve Yelvington, manager of Web site development at Morris
Digital Works in Augusta, Ga.

"The Internet is a participative medium," he said. "We create
value by integrating content, commerce, and community. It's all
about context. If conversations are isolated from content,
they're not going to be as meaningful as they can and should be."

Will this interaction become the norm?

So when will this type of interaction become the norm on
newspapers' online pages? Omar Wasow, executive director of the
community site BlackPlanet.com, said that it's been hard for
traditional publishers to embrace the audience response. "It
takes something of a leap to make the audience as important as
the editors and writers," Wasow said.

At BlackPlanet.com, which attracted 1.2 million unique users in
February according to Nielsen/NetRatings, the message boards and
discussions are the main focus of the online community. Of the
articles posted online, every one of them has a message board.
And readers do comment; a review of D'Angelo's recent
Voodoo album generated 70 pages of comments. "Our central
approach is to wrap community into content," Wasow said.

Coming from the other end, with tons of content but little
interaction, is Joe Michaud, president of MaineToday.com. With a
regional site that brings together news from three newspapers --
Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, and Morning
Sentinel -- and one television station, Michaud is trying to
find a way for community groups to share their experience and
expertise with the greater community.

Owned by Blethen Maine Newspapers, the site is getting ready to
launch a feature that will allow topical online discussions.
Fishing has proven to be a popular discussion topic in Maine, so
the site has recruited a marine biologist, also the paper's
contributing columnist, to monitor a new forum powered by San
Francisco-based technology provider Web Crossing. (NYTimes.com
also uses Web Crossing for its online forums which aren't a part
of its Abuzz network.)

The main issue for Michaud is weighing the amount of resources
the discussions require compared to the value they create. He
hopes to gather valuable information for advertisers with a
required registration form for users to fill out if they want to
participate in discussions. Online advertisers have been known to
shy away from sponsoring online discussions due to the lack of
control over content, but Michaud thinks an online registration
form, requiring name and e-mail address, might tame the talk even
though users can remain anonymous on the discussion list. Users
also have the option of creating a profile page with a photo,
which is available through Web Crossing software being used for
the forums.

If the fishing forum works, MaineToday.com will offer it on other
outdoor channels, integrating the discussions with editorial
content. "Eventually we will get to news," Michaud said. "Despite
how much traffic comes from opinion forums, we're not sure that's
the most valuable asset to attract the audience we want."

Live chat fuels message boards

Beyond discussion boards is live chat. Washingtonpost.com has pursued
news-oriented discussions full-heartedly with its Live Online feature,
powered by technology built in-house. Lisa Todorovich, executive producer
of Live Online, has four producers who help her get not only the paper's
reporters to participate but actual newsmakers as well. Todorovich
actually prefers getting the people who make the news to be the featured
guests. On Friday, for example, Marc Summerlin, deputy assistant to the
president for economic policy, was scheduled to participate in a one-hour
chat about the tax cut.

Besides scheduling guests, Todorovich sees her main role as being
the one who responds and keeps the accompanying message boards
going. She's found that personality does come through on
discussion forums and people who go off-topic are usually
encouraged to take it elsewhere by other users. She does get some
people who write "just to stir the pot," but she doesn't advocate
dumping a person's post. "We do keep it on a scale that we can
watch."

For the message boards, washingtonpost.com uses technology from
Delphi Forums, now a part of Prospero, based in Cambridge, Mass.
The technology provides a language filter as well as a review-
and-release module to ease the pressure of maintaining discussion
boards, according to Rusty Williams, vice president of strategic
partnerships at Prospero. Williams is currently working on
getting newspapers to add scribble-boards to editorial content
pages. "The thrust is to integrate it with the editorial
experience," he said.

"The thrust is to integrate it with the editorial experience,"
said Williams of the technology provider's newest tool to the
Active Content product. Scribble-boards, also known as graffiti
boards, allow users to interact, submit, and read a discussion
thread on a single story page. Editors have control whether or
not to include a scribble-board on a story page. The board exists
for a few days before the content is archived for read-only
status.

As for the message boards provided by Delphi Forums, Yelvington
finds them lacking. "I want message boards to be fast, fluid, and
conversational. My experience with Delphi Forums hasn't been like
that," he said. "Even though I'm tempted to be picky, I don't
want to put too much attention on software. It's far more
important to focus on consistent integration of conversation into
the user experience, and nurturing community as a process."

Morris Digital Works, where Yelvington currently works, uses UBB
(Universal Bulletin Boards) for its message boards and eShare for
live chats on its Web sites. UBB is based in Seattle and eShare
works out of Norcross, Ga.

As for where user-generated content will ultimately end up on a
news site, we have yet to know, but Williams thinks "it's just
barely starting to reach the promise that it has."

Yelvington said of the future that, "The proponents of civic
journalism are starting to talk instead about 'interactive
journalism,' and where they're headed is very congruent with the
participative model of the Internet."

"It depends on how deep into the pool you want to wade,"
Todorovich wisely said.



Karim Mostafa (kmostafa@editorandpublisher.com) is associate editor for E&P Online.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.