This week’s Leaderboard is all about participation.

We are featuring three distinct ways beat bloggers are getting their users involved and harnessing the collective intelligence of their communities. In today’s era of limited journalism resources, utilizing a knowledgeable user base just makes sense. Users are a tremendous asset and the best beat bloggers have learned to tap into their collective wisdom.

These beat bloggers have found ways to not only harness the wisdom of the crowd, but they have also succeeded in getting their users to participate. Participation is a big part of the Web, and these three beat bloggers offer distinct ways to get users involved.

Gene Sloan | USA Today

• Sloan made the Leaderboard this week for a cool feature of his, “Reader Tip of the Week.” Each week Sloan asks readers to send in tips on a cruise-related issue. This week he is looking for advice on going on a cruise with teenagers.
• There are some fantastic tips left by readers that help Sloan do his job better. One reader pointed out that certain cruise lines offer teen programs and suggested that people with teens avoid lines that do not offer teen programs.
• This weekly feature servers several purposes: It gets users involved and talking about issues, it taps into the wisdom of Sloan’s community and it serves to help Sloan report better. It’s also a very easy feature to produce.
• The best readers’ tips are put into the print edition of USA Today. A little bit of work can go a long way.

Etan Horowitz | Orlando Sentinel

• Horowitz is employing some networked journalism this week by asking users to report on Circuit City liquidation sales. Standard operating practice during a liquidation usually sees a store raise prices to MSRP before offering discounts. Few retailers attempt to sell items — sale or no — at MSRP.
• This means that a discount of 10 percent off, for instance, during liquidation might actually be more expensive than Circuit City was selling it for before liquidation.
• Prices and availability vary greatly per store during liquidation. One Circuit City may be barely discounting items because of brisk sales, while another may have begun deep discounting.
• Horowitz is asking users to report on the prices of items they see at their local Circuit City. He is also asking that they list which store they went to. Horowitz couldn’t do this all himself, but he is smartly employing the power of his users on his site to piece together this story.
• Horowitz’s users can help other users determine whether or not it is worth shopping at a particular Circuit City.
• Networked journalism is a great way to get users involved and to report on topics that a reporter couldn’t do alone.

Buzz Out Loud | CNET

• “Well actually” are two of the most famous words on this daily podcasts. Listeners write in to correct the hosts or to clarify tricky tech-related information.
• Covering a wide range of tech topics isn’t the easiest, and Buzz Out Loud’s vast, knowledgeable audience provides a lot of fact checkers to ensure accuracy.
• BOL’s Tom Merritt, Natali Del Conte, Molly Wood and Jason Howell know tech well, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t use some help in covering a broad and nuanced topic. Users send in tips and news stories every day that help BOL report on tech in a more efficient manner.
• Listeners also correct the hosts when they are wrong. It’s not often that one of the hosts is blatantly wrong, but many tech topics are extremely nuanced and can be hard for most people to get 100 percent right. The BOL gang may report on computer encryption, for instance, and the next day a computer security expert may call in to clarify a point or to add additional insight.
• This show is all about user participation because it wouldn’t be possible without a lot of help from listeners.