We’ve been talking about ways to cultivating conversations and communities lately.

Monica Guzman, the first online reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has yet another way to get the conversation going. She analyzes previous comments that posters have made to spot trends. She then makes posts about them, asking users for their thoughts.

A few weeks ago people started commenting about a woman accused of killing her family and how she wanted the death penalty. Many responses suggested that people couldn’t wait to see this woman die. Guzman thought this topic would be good to analyze:

Early in the forum, reader dalefi asked if the death penalty was about justice or revenge. "Judging from the comments posted here," the reader later wrote, "it is definitely about revenge."

Anonymity releases ugly instincts. But are they our true ones? Do you want justice for Michele Anderson? Or revenge?

Guzman had also noticed that people talk about the "Seattle Way" a lot in comments:

Accompanied and sometimes skewed by would-be smears like "left-wing"
and "liberal," Seattle’s tendency to talk issues to death is one of the
most-repeated grievances against the city in our Soundoffs on local
politics.

Recent history gives us plenty of examples. Think of the monorail, the light rail, the viaduct, school busing, the Seattle Commons, the stadiums. All sparked drawn-out, slow discussion. All took a long time to resolve – if they were resolved at all.

Guzman took this common complaint about Seattle and turned it into a way to get users to start talking about more substantive issues:

If you had a magic wand and could take action on just one jammed issue in Seattle, what would it be?

The last example I want to highlight is about the seemingly harmless issue of bonfires. It was proposed that bonfires be banned from Seattle beaches to help fight global warming. This issue brought liberals and conservatives together. Guzman found three common issues that users brought up:

1. Aren’t there better ways to fight global warming than to go after little bonfires?
2. Global warming is important, but so is the way I live my life.
3. This is just too silly. The government must have another motive.

Guzman spends each day analyzing what people are talking about on the PI’s Web site, blogs and in the Seattle blogosphere. She is looking for flash points that get people talking, and she is looking for further ways to extend the conversation to cultivate an online community.

Not many papers have someone who does what Guzman does. Few even have someone who is in charge of community engagement. These are the new kinds of jobs that newspapers need to be competitive online.