The site itself looks similar to Twitter and Yahoo! Answers and is centered around people asking questions and receiving answers from knowledgeable people. For example, technology reporters can get together and seek help from each other. The site is also a great tool for journalists to discover knowledgeable people that they don’t already know.

In fact that discovery of new people is one reason Sholin isn’t currently allowing people to important contacts from Gmail and other services. He wants journalists to meet new experts and sources, and believes that meeting new people can only help journalists’ reporting.

Asking and answering questions is the heart of ReportingOn. For instance Chris Amico recently asked, “I’m looking into US foreign aid funding and spending. Anyone know a good source for data on the subject? Especially which agencies/departments (USAID, DoD, State) distribute funds?”

That question was met with a response from Chrys Wu, “Start with foreign aid data from U.S. Census Bureau: http://tr.im/sm4e . Information from the Bureau of Economic Analysis may also be useful to you: http://www.bea.gov/scb/index.htm”

Users have profiles that show their recent activity, how many questions they have asked, how many questions they have answered, whether people liked their responses and more. Users now get points based on whether or not people like their answers. This point-based system is an incentive for users to submit quality answers and is also a way for people to see how knowledgeable and helpful a user is.

Sholin said on the ReportingOn blog that the point system will be expanding in the future:

A points-based system in RO 2.0 helps feed the egos of power users while acting as a guide, beat-by-beat, to who might have a good answer for your question.  There are still leaderboards to be built, and I’m thinking up other ways to use the points system to motivate users, especially as the network gets off the ground.

ReportingOn originaly had a 140-character limit like Twitter, but Sholin got rid of that feature/limitation. He realized that it works well for Twitter, but ReportingOn questions and answers sometimes needed more space:

As has been pointed out more than a few times, Twitter is a good place to start an argument, but a really poor place to finish one.  Although I’d hesitate to frame the sort of exploratory, qualitative Q & A that could happen on ReportingOn as “argument” or “debate,” I’d like to believe that highlighting a “good answer” as noted by the person who asked the question will help lead to a permanent archive for reporting resources in a way that Twitter simply doesn’t do.

To put a finer point on it, if I ask a question of my followers on Twitter and I get a great answer, I get it in a stream of replies that are useful to a certain subset of Twitter users at that moment, but fly right by in the stream and never come back unless I pull them out of the flow of Twitter and display them somewhere.  At this particular moment in time, Twitter’s search functionality is highly ephemeral in nature, as it starts and stops indexing from time to time, and rarely dips back in the chronology as far as might be useful.  So where the quick-answer utility of Twitter stops, the long-term archive of ReportingOn begins.

ReportingOn is still young and doesn’t have a large user base, but it does hold promise to help connect journalists from around the country who cover similar topics and beats. Journalists working together can be exponentially more powerful and impactful than journalists working alone. Collaboration is here to stay.

Some topics discussed in our conversation:

• How can ReportingOn help improve a journalist’s work?
• How does Sholin envision ReportingOn being used after it becomes more popular?
• What’s next for ReportingOn? What new features may be developed?
• ReportingOn’s code is open source. What could news orgs do with that code?
• Why would someone want to leave an answer?
• And much more.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Kramer noticed that local businesses in Minnesota were using Twitter, blogs and other social networks to get their messages out to people, and Kramer wanted to tap into this market. Real-Time Ads don’t even require additional effort on the part of advertisers either. All an advertisers has to do is submit an RSS feed of content that they are already creating (like a Twitter feed or feed from a blog), and MinnPost will display headlines or brief summaries of these existing messages that link back to the full message on an advertiser’s Web site.

Real-Time Ads look like a cross between traditional classified ads and Twitter updates. And like a Twitter stream, Real Time Ads are listed in chronological order. Advertisers are required to update their messages frequently, and if an advertiser doesn’t update for awhile, their message will be at the bottom.

MinnPost is currently vetting advertisers for this program in order to ensure a high quality experience. A lot of advertisers are interested in Real-Time Ads, but many don’t have an RSS feed of a frequently updated message. If an advertiser isn’t already harnessing the immediacy and frequency of social media and blogs, they probably aren’t a good fit for Real-Time Ads.

“If you’re only creating a message once a week, then this thing is not for you,” Kramer said. “Beyond that, we do want the space to be a value to our readers. So, we might say only certain kinds of products and services could be in there.”

Kramer strives to keep MinnPost’s ads high quality because high quality ads provide a better user experience and bring in more money. MinnPost only displays banner ads to Minnesota residents, guaranteeing advertisers that their ads are reaching the people they want to reach. This targeting of ads is why MinnPost enjoys a robust $15 CPM.

Real-Time Ads enjoy one significant benefit over other, more traditional ads like banner ads: they’re self serve. MinnPost is not involved in the ad creation process, and advertisers sign themselves up and provide their own RSS feeds. All MinnPost does is vet potential advertisers.

This new ad format is meant to be another piece of the puzzle for MinnPost, not a panacea. The site has banner ads, large sponsorships, small sponsorships, a jobs board and now, frequently updated, small ads. Banner ads are designed weeks or months in advance and are for longer-term campaigns.

A Real-Time Ad could be advertising a lunch special for two hours. A restaurant, for example, might notice that business is slow and then update their status with a new special to try to entice dinners to come in. Real-Time Ads are designed for the now.

“For readers, it’s a kind of marketplace of the latest marketing messages,” Kramer said.

The service is currently in beta and free to advertisers testing it out. A final price for the ads hasn’t been settled on, but Kramer said the ads will be less than $100 a week. Kramer said MinnPost is considering charging different rates for different placement. A Real-Time Ad that is placed on all pages would cost more than one that just showed up an ad-only page.

MinnPost is also considering charging different rates based on how often ads are rotated into a particular spot. Kramer also said it’s possible that Real-Time Ads will be targeted. For instance, a local sports store would be able to choose to have their Real-Time Ads only show up on sports content.

“There could be many, many combinations, with different prices on them,” Kramer said about Real-Time Ads.

Kramer views Real-Time Ads as a form of content that enhance a user’s experience, and ideally, MinnPost users would find Real-Time Ads valuable, instead of distracting like most online ads. Kramer is considering having a dedicated page of just Real-Time Ads. A business directory could logically follow as well.

The format is about a week old, and Kramer said more time is needed to gather feedback before making any major judgements. Advertisers seem intrigued by the idea. Only time will tell, however, if users find the new ads valuable.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Yes, you read that correctly: a newspaper has a social media editor. And why not? Newspapers have all kinds of editors, but few have a dedicated editorial staffer who focuses solely on social media.

“To me, social media is one of those things where it is no longer a question whether you should, but how you should do it,” Quigley said.

For Quigley, being on social media isn’t something that’s nice to do but optional. He said harnessing social media (and the Web, mobile and any  new tools that pop up)  is a question of relevancy.

“If we’re going to stay relevant, we need to be everywhere,” he said.

If millions of people are on social media, Quigley said journalists need to be there too. Social media is only going to become more popular and its relevancy will only increase. Ignoring social media may be tantamount to ignoring reality.

In his previous role as Internet Editor, Quigley spent half of his time on social media and the other half on working with the newsroom to make sure the Statesman’s staffers were coordinated and getting content and breaking news online.

“I’ve found a lot of success with social media in the past year,” Quigley said. “The management here recognized that and wanted to advance even further with social media.”

And social media really is a full time job. Papers like the Statesman have scores of reporters and editors using social media and engaging users online. Quigley is now the point man for social media and how journalists should be using it at the Statesman. Perhaps more importantly, Quigley is the point man for experimenting with new technologies.

“I can spend more time focusing on social media, interacting with the community, finding the best ways to engage our readers and our viewers and to make sure we are staying ahead on technology,” he said.

The Statesman was not one of the first news organizations on Twitter, but it was one of the first news organizations on Twitter that really tried to harness the medium well. From the beginning, Quigley knew he didn’t want the @Statesman Twitter account to just be an RSS feed.

“I noticed that all of my friends on Twitter were sharing links to news,” Quigley said. “And I thought ‘why can’t we guide this conversation?’ I wanted the interaction.”

Quigley uses the @Statesman account to interact with people, hand select interesting stories to share and “basically treat social media with the social part emphasized.” Even though many of his bosses weren’t on Twitter and many didn’t even know what Twitter was, they were supportive of his idea.

“It was pretty successful from the start,” he said.

One of the things Quigley is hoping to spend more time on now is seeing what is coming next.

“I want to find where the new curve is and get in front of it as fast as possible,” he said. “I want to be able to spend my time reading up on everything I can, seeing what non-newspaper industries are doing and what works for them.

• Why did the Statesman originally get into social media?
• How did Quigley first get into Twitter? Why did he become addicted to it?
• What are the biggest positives of social media?
• Are the lines between marketing and editorial blurring?
• How does a journalism student or journalist get a job as a social media editor?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

ChicagoNow, the loose collection of Chicago-focused beatblogs, has picked up Alexander Russo’s District 299 beatblog.

ChicagoNow is a new media venture by the Tribune Co. that is taking established bloggers in the Chicago area and bringing them in under one umbrella.Russo’s work will be appearing on both Catalyst, his sponsor for about two years and ChicagoNow. ChicagoNow has been doing non-exclusive deals with bloggers as a way to keep costs down.

By being non-exclusive, ChicagoNow pays bloggers less, but this also gives bloggers the freedom to repost their work on other networks or on their own personal blogs. ChicagoNow is bringing together established bloggers under one umbrella with the hope of being able to deliver more visitors and a bigger community.

For now, Russo is trying to keep the content the same between the two sites, but he is not ruling out unique content appearing on either ChicagoNow or Catalyst. In many ways this is new territory for Russo. Catalyst is a non-profit and their expectations for District 299 are much different than the for-profit ChicagoNow.

Russo will be spending more time thinking about SEO and ROI. His work will not only have to have educational value but also monetary value.

ChicagoNow is an aggressive, HuffingtonPost-esque network of bloggers. So, what would they want with an education blogger? ChicagoNow is moving into some more news-oriented territory to augment their entertainment-focused blogs.

“I think the second-wave of ChicagoNow blogs is going to be more serious,” Russo said. “I think they are moving to balance things out. They are trying to balance both what needs talking about with what people want to talk about.”

District 299, however, would appear a better fit for ChicagoNow than Catalyst anyway. Russo has always been an aggressive, opinionated, fast moving blogger. Russo’s approach has always seemed at odds with Catalyst’s staid mission, “To improve the education of all children through authoritative journalism and leadership of a constructive dialogue among students, parents, educators, community leaders and policy makers.”

“Catalyst and District 299 have always been — stylistically and substantively — very different,” Russo said. “It was a big stretch for them to take me on in the first place.”

But Russo, a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University, is very passionate about education reform and is very good at fostering conversations about education. So while stylistically, Russo’s work is much different than the rest of what appears in Catalyst’s publications, what he is trying to accomplish fits right in with Catalyst’s mission.

So while it may seem paradoxical that Russo’s work would fit in on a both a serious education site and an aggressive new media site, it’s really more a testament to how Russo is able to take a serious topic and make it interesting and conversational. Ultimately, ChicagoNow wants to be “an online town square for the Chicago of right now.”

The one thing that Russo’s District 299 has always excelled at is being a place for people to have conversations.

We also discuss in this week’s podcast:

• Will District 299 change now that it has a new backer?
• Why will Russo be doing more link journalism and curation now? Why do readers like curation?
• How will District 299 become more hyperlocal, focusing on individual schools?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

MinnPost ran a micro-sponsor campaign around one of its most popular blogs, the BrauBlog. The campaign will raise about $12,000 for MinnPost in $10 and $25 increments. Half of that money is a matching grant from Harnisch Foundation.

While this micro-sponsor campaign did raise money to help support journalism at the non-profit MinnPost, it’s larger goal was to get people into the mindset of supporting journalism with money.

“Really, the bigger mission here is that direct support is something that you’ll have to consider,” Brauer said. “I think that this is in large part about retraining the audience.”

MinnPost is supported by large donors and advertising. Recently, Brauer and publisher Joel Kramer had an idea to start a micro-sponsor campaign, to try to expand the donor pool and revenue base.

“I think it as one arrow in the quiver,” Brauer said about small donor fundraising. “There are a number of different ways that people are going to have to raise money. I like the fact that MinnPost now, in the addition to advertising, has not just a big donor program, but also a small donor program.”

Brauer believes, however, that limiting donations to $10 and $25 may have limited the amount of donations. In the future, MinnPost may have a different donating model. But the fundraiser was a success overall, because it accomplished its main goal of increasing MinnPost’s donor base.

“Just like colleges, on some level, are happy to get that initial donation from new graduates, even if it isn’t big money, because hopefully you form a bond that lasts as they make more and reap it down the road,” he said. “It has some short term advantages, but I think the power is really in the longer term.”

And consider this: about 300 people were willing to put down money to help support local journalism without asking for anything additional in return. There are no premium features, or even gifts to say thank you to donors. People donated because they wanted to support local journalism.

Also consider that about two-thirds of donors donated the higher, $25 amount. With a more flexible donation model in the future, MinnPost might be able to get many of these small donors to donate more than $25.

On the blogging front, Brauer is yet another blogger that has noticed that frequency is important to success on the Web. Frequency, however, can have drawbacks. Perhaps the biggest, and not always openly discussed drawback, is burnout.

“What it ended up doing, at its worst for me, is that it contributed to some real burnout that I’m wrestling with,” he said.

Bloggers like Brauer produce copious amounts of copy, much more than they did as print reporters. People prefer more shorter posts to fewer longer posts on the Web.

In the end, Brauer is writing more copy than ever before. He says writing individual blog posts is easier than writing a print story, but he just writes considerably more copy now.

Now, Brauer is not writing more because his editors are requiring him to write so much; Rather, Brauer has access to Web analytics, which can be intoxicating for many bloggers. He knows that the more content he produces, the more page views and unique visitors he gets. Just about every blogger wants more.

“My boss has not been on my butt about this at all,” he said. “I know for myself that the flip side of creativity is mania. I’ve discovered new levels of obsessive compulsion that I never thought I had. There is a certain, ‘I get on the treadmill and I feel like I can’t get off’”

Brauer said he is trying to seek a better balance and has cut down on how much copy he has been producing lately.

Brauer has found himself reporting stories in a serial manner. Instead of waiting for a story to be finished or for a big moment to occur, Brauer reports as the story unfolds. Often several blog posts will come together to tell the complete story.

“Instead, I can sort of tell people, ‘here is what I know now; it’s not complete,’” he said. “I find people really like that. It’s easier to digest.”

Not only do readers enjoy this different take on reporting, but it’s easier on Brauer too. He doesn’t have to write big stories all the time. He can just write what he knows at the time.

This is also a good way to get users involved. Reporting stories as they unfold gives users a chance to contact Brauer with tips and additional information.

Brauer also actively asks his readers to help out, and enjoys the crowdsourcing that beatblogging allows. “Inviting people to help, not just getting it when they offer” leads to better stories and journalism, Brauer said.

We also discuss in this podcast:

• Why and how did he get into blogging?
• How has blogging improved his journalism?
• What kind of community has sprung up around BrauBlog and how has that changed his reporting?
• How does mixing reporting with opinion make journalists more transparent?
• How does being open and honest about mistakes boost credibility?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

On her blog, InsideEd, she explained how she went from a skeptic to a believer in her two years on the blog:

When I found out two years ago that The Sun would be starting an education blog, I complained that it would take up too much time. I was right that it is a huge time investment, but I had no idea how much fun or rewarding it would be. Suddenly, teachers and administrators who never would have let me quote them by name in the newspaper were speaking out about the challenges they face every day, sparking some of the most engaging and meaningful dialogue in which I’ve ever been a part. We’ve often talked about how the best professional development comes from teachers sharing ideas. Similarly, I believe that some of the best solutions to the problems facing our schools can come from thoughtful conversation among stakeholders like you.

Neufeld recently volunteered to be let go from the Sun in order to save a colleague’s job. Many of Neufeld’s coworkers had families, mortgages and other commitments that would make it harder for them to lose a job than for Neufeld. Plus, Neufeld has new media skills that others do not, which should make it easier for her to find a new job.

The Sun had become a depressing place to work lately, according to Neufeld. All these factors combined to lead Neufeld to ask to be one of the employees laid off. She hopes to find another journalism job and get back into beatblogging, but this is a bleak time for journalism.

The cuts at the Sun have yielded more than just a reduction in force. The staff cuts have also changed how blogs are edited. Now, there is no formal editing process for blogs.

While this may seem normal for lighter blogs, it became a concern for writers like Neufeld who covered serious beats. For non-breaking news posts, many of the Sun’s bloggers liked having the option of an editor reading over posts first to check for accuracy, grammar and style.

InsideEd bloggers — there are three left now that Neufeld has left the Sun — have been trying an informal system where they edit each other’s posts upon request. InsideEd has always been a group blog, and this may be the best way for those bloggers to get their work edited.

Neufeld said InsideEd allowed for a most honest form of journalism because more people participated in discussions, more voices were heard and people were not afraid to speak out. Many teachers and administrators are afraid to speak out on the record, but were willing to share their stories on the blog.

“Absolutely more honest in that people can speak more freely,” she said. “A lot of stuff gets out because we have the blog.”

InsideEd, however, covered more than just the Baltimore School District. The blog covered several districts with several bloggers, but Neufeld found that content for the Baltimore district was more popular than content for surrounding districts.

She believed this was partly because readers of Baltimore education news don’t care about suburban schools and vice versa. Splitting up the InsideEd blog into multiple blogs for each school district may have yielded better results for non-Baltimore schools.

“I do think it is different audiences,” she said about the different districts.

The other main issue Neufeld noticed on InsideEd was that the suburban writers were unable to dedicate as much time to content for InsideEd. Neufeld found, like many beatblogs, that frequent content is one of the keys to success. Occasional stories about suburban school districts didn’t garner the same amount of pageviews or comments as stories about the Baltimore district.

“I don’t think you can develop a strong following unless you are posting a lot,” she said about developing a popular beatblog.

Neufeld found the blog to be a tremendous source builder, and expanding one’s network of sources is a key to beatblogging.

“My regular commeters became great tipsters for me,” she said. “I’ve developed eyes and ears for me all over the city. In addition to posting comments on the blog, many of them e-mail me all the time about things that happen in their school.”

By the end, Neufeld’s work flow looked like this: If a story broke, she would first break it on Twitter, then write a blog post and then write a print story. It’s hard to believe that just two years ago only the last part of that work flow was true. Today people expect a lot more than just print stories.

Last week The Wall Street Journal released a new social media policy, and it caused a bit of stir because many — including this blog — found the policy to be counterproductive and puzzling. Neufeld has been active on Twitter and social media (for work and personal), and Tribune as a whole has been rather forward thinking with social media. Colonel Tribune personifies their social media ethos.

“I think it’s pretty much use common sense,” Neufeld said about the Sun’s social media policy.

More of the topics discussed:

• How has social media helped her reporting?
• How have her editor’s views of blogging changed?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

GlobalPost.com, the foreign news startup based in Boston, is one of the most ambitious. Foreign news has always been expensive, and it was one of the first things traditional metro newspapers cut. Regardless, editor Charles Sennott and his staff are trying to bring a new model and approach to a very important pillar of journalism.

“It’s been a lot of hard work — no one ever said it would be easy,” Sennott said. “But I also think that we’ve done what we set out to do which is to build a network of very talented reporters: journalists who have a lot of background and grounding in their subjects.”

GlobalPost has a team of 65 people in 45 countries. Correspondent complete a dispatch a week from an area of the world that they are very knowledgeable about. Many of its journalists were former foreign correspondents from companies like The Washington Post and Time Magazine.

We spoke to Sennott only a few months ago, yet GlobalPost.com looks noticeably different and has many new features. The biggest new features are centered around Passport, the premium subscription features of GlobalPost.com. Passport is one of three revenue streams for GlobalPost (advertising and syndication are the others).

The $199-a-year membership (many people such as students, NGOs, military, etc are eligible for discounts) is centered around access and knowledge:

Membership in Passport offers an entrée into GlobalPost’s inner circle. Passport leverages our network of 70 country-based and special beat correspondents to deliver exclusive content on key economic and political events. GlobalPost correspondents have extensive international experience, providing an unmatched view from the ground.

Passport also gives you a significant voice in the news. We invite you to join us in reinventing the media equation, empowering members for the Web 2.0 era. Instead of the old top-down model where editors decide what you need to read, as a Passport member you play an unprecedented role in shaping the stories that get covered, via ForeignDesk, Correspondent Calls and Newsmaker Interviews. Simply put, it’s access that gives you an edge. Moreover, we recognize how busy you are. We help you maximize your knowledge via products that save you time, such as Global 10, Correspondent Alerts, the Editor’s Global Brief and our convenient Monthly Newsletter.

Passport features can range from more in-depth audio interviews that compliment free articles on the site to allowing users to pitch stories to foreign correspondents to being in on conference calls. GlobalPost leaders are hoping to get at least 2,000 Passport subscribers by the end of the year.

“We can have a smaller cohort that we can really interact with,” he said about the promise of Passport.

The user interface has also been updated a bit is more enjoyable to use and look at. As GlobalPost builds out, we’ll probably see more interface tweaks.

Some other topics discussed:

• GlobalPost has begun using social media. What role will social media play in their future?
• How is GlobalPost’s syndication model going?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Kent Fischer is leaving journalism at the end of the month. It’s not that Fischer doesn’t enjoy journalism, it’s just that journalism — especially newspapers — are having a tough time supporting journalists. His employer, The Dallas Morning News, just announced another round of layoffs and pay cuts.

Fischer isn’t the first start beatblogger to leave journalism recently. One of our other favorite beatbloggers, Ed Silverman, left newspapers last year. His former employer, The Star-Ledger, may not survive the year.

Fischer wrote me in an email:

The blog has a shitload of fun. It’s what keeps me coming in each morning. It was a blast to learn, and I think I only recently discovered what a good beat reporter and an engaged community can produce. I’m saddened that I won’t be around to push it to the limit.

But the news business no longer provides stability or financial security. If I was young and single and didn’t have two kids under 3 and no mortgage … I’d probably stick around to see how this all ends. But I got all those things and more. So, I’m out, effective April 24.

Fischer wrote on his blog:

This blog has been a career highlight for me. When my editor first approached me with the idea of building an online community around DISD … well, let’s say I was skeptical. You all proved me wrong. I grew to look forward each morning to compiling the Daily Dish, to experimenting with this new form of journalism, to an engaging online conversation. I awaited your comments — Ray’s thoughtfulness, Aloysius’ sharp wit, Cheeto’s grounded-in-reality point of view and all the smart newcomers (like Ann M) that we seem to attract every day.

The DISD Blog revolutionized education reporting in the Dallas area, and Fischer’s readers responded with an outpouring of gratitude when they found out he was leaving. Here are some of those comments:

Posted by donnal @ 10:40 AM Fri, Apr 10, 2009

Thank you Kent. Between you and Tawnell, you’ve given a forum for teachers to vent and offer feedback and insight. You’ve definitely informed the public on a daily watch of good things along with the bad that happens in DISD. Most important to me, you helped parents and taxpayers better understand what’s happening in the schools and how our money is spent/misused; however it applies. I know I’ve gained a lot of info and appreciation in a very short time reading this blog.

Good luck with your new job.

Posted by DISD Chick @ 11:55 AM Fri, Apr 10, 2009

You will definitely be missed! This is such a rough time for newspapers that your departure doesn’t really surprise me, but it is a loss. Best wishes to you in your new job, which does sound like an exciting adventure for you. One door closes, another opens!

P.S. Go Red Sox! (1-2 to start the season, eek)

Posted by Jon Dahlander @ 12:31 PM Fri, Apr 10, 2009 (the spokesman for the DISD)

Kent,

I’ve said this privately to you and now I say it publicly too: While I obviously didn’t love everything you did, I respected it and respect you as well. The Dallas Independent School District is better because of your efforts. You helped clean up some areas that needed it. While that wasn’t always comfortable, it was important.

I wish you and your family the very best in the future.

Sincerely,
Jon Dahlander

Posted by Taxedout @ 3:47 PM Fri, Apr 10, 2009

Happy Trails, Kent.
You have spread sunshine all over the place!
Thanks to you, we’ve all learned a lot, sighed a lot, laughed a lot, and screamed a lot. All the best!

Tawnell, keep the lights on!

Below you’ll find my final podcast with Fischer, an exit interview of sorts. Fischer discusses what he learned from beatblogging, what went well, what could have gone better, what he would have done if he stuck around longer and more. Fischer also discusses the state of the news industry.

It’s sad to see Fischer go. He did a lot of innovating, which I went over in this post from early today. But he left a lot of nuggets of wisdom in our final talk. Listen to it; it’s worth your time.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

In today’s podcast, Parker shares past lessons from his first beatblogging adventure and his vision for his new beatblog, Chicago Health Matters, at the new media start-up Chi-Town Daily News.

Parker said that one of the things he didn’t do well in the past on his previous beatblog, Schoolhouse Talk, was identifying and specifically engaging his audience.

“While we posed questions, hoping for interaction, sometimes it happened and sometimes it didn’t,” he said. “I think the most comments we ever had were on a post about an event called Meet at the Pole, where students meet at a flagpole to pray. There wasn’t much constructive dialogue.”

Engaging the audience will be a big part of Parker’s new beatblogging efforts. His blog is separate from Chi-Town Daily News, trying to build its own presence. The main site will get more typical news stories, while the beatblog will be more about building a community, starting discussions and filling in additional, often more minute details.

Parker wants his blog to be a backstory for stories that are published on Chi-Town Daily News and also be a place to post additional details, links and documents that might not make it into stories on the main site.

“I hope to write pieces that will give our audience new information about topics I cover,” Parker said. “Background, documents, the anatomy of a story: the things that make a story, but aren’t always included in them. I feel like we have a lot of latitude in what we can do. It’s a new experiment, and I hope people will enjoy what we post.”

Experimenting is also a big part of what Parker plans on doing on his beatblog. He is already producing news for the main site, so his beatblog doesn’t have to be relied on to break news. Rather he can use the beatblog to experiment with new forms of journalism, new ways of communicating with users and as a proving ground for new ideas that might eventually make their way onto Chi-Town Daily News.

“I kind see it as a partner with our main Web site and a place where we can experiment and play around with the Internet,” he said. “Even though we’re an online publication, there is a lot out there we haven’t taken advantage and this is the first step towards that.”

Chi-Town Daily News, for its part, is a non-profit journalism start-up that receives a third of its current funding from the Knight Foundation. It employees four full-time reporters, has seven full-time employees, four freelancers and an army of unpaid contributors. But it hopes to fill a niche by covering stories that the major news organizations in Chicago neglect or miss — specially public affairs stories.

“To cover issues that aren’t being covered very well or at all by other media outlets in Chicago,” Parker said of the mission of Chi-Town Daily News. “So that gives us an opportunity to fill a niche that other people aren’t covering and to really sell ourselves as the only people covering these important beats.”

As a non-profit, Chi-Town Daily News can’t afford to spend a lot of money experimenting. But experimenting doesn’t have to be expensive. Parker’s new beatblog is hosted for free by Blogger, and other fantastic blogging options like WordPress.com have free options as well.

Parker is also using Twitter to help build a community around his beat, and most of the people that he has friended on Twitter are people or organizations involved in health in Chicago. He quickly turned to Twitter to help build a network of knowledgeable sources, because that’s one of the things that Twitter excels with. Don’t expect the @Chicago_Health Twitter feed to just be links or some other boring, poor use of the medium.

“This isn’t going to just be a Twitter feed of whatever comes out of our blog, because that’s boring and that’s not how the Internet works, that’s not how online news works,” he said.

Eventually Parker would like to make the blog into more of a community blog, by allowing community members and decision makers to guest blog.

“I think that will create a real sense of community ownership,” he said. “This blog isn’t about me or the Daily News. It’s about the important issues facing Chicagoans.

Some additional topics discussed:

• How will he decide which content makes sense on each platform?
• How will he decide which stories go where?
• Will he be using other social media around his beat?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

This week’s podcast is a joint interview with three of the minds and voices behind CNET’s Buzz Out Loud — Tom Merritt, Natali Del Conte and Jason Howell (Monday co-host Molly Wood was unable to make the interview).

Buzz Out Loud may be an audio (and video) podcast, but it utilizes many of the same techniques that beatbloggers use. In fact, Buzz Out Loud is one of the first major instances of a mainstream media outlet utilizing two-way communication and interaction as a major part of their work. If you listen to Buzz Out Loud, you’ll realize that without its listeners, the show is not possible.

“They are essential,” Merritt said about the show’s listeners. “That is what makes the show. It has been that way from the beginning.”

Buzz Out Loud, for those unfamiliar with the show, is a daily tech news podcast that mixes news and commentary together. Listeners of the show send in tips every day for stories they think the co-hosts should discuss. Listeners also send in e-mails and voicemails, the best of which are read or played on the show.

Many journalism organizations have begun podcasting in the past few years, often with mixed or little success. Buzz Out Loud is a show that anyone who wants to start a podcast should listen to. Many journalists, especially newspaper journalists, don’t harness the medium properly when first starting a podcast.

These podcasts are often dull and dispassionate. What may work for a newspaper, may not work for a podcast. A large part of Buzz Out Loud’s success is due to the passion its co-hosts have.

Building a community with user interaction

User interaction is the key, however, to Buzz Out Loud’s success. Listeners feel a part of a community, and it’s co-hosts are easy to get a hold of. The show accepts voicemails, e-mails, has a forum and its co-hosts can be found on a variety of social networks.

“When we started we had no idea what people were going to like,” Merritt said. “We decided to build in as a much user feedback as possible so that we could listen to people.”

User feedback has caused Buzz Out Loud to evolve over time. The show started as a short five-minute, every-other-day podcast and has morphed into a daily audio/video podcast that runs around 40 minutes. This transformation happened because listeners said they wanted more, and the show has always tried to be what its listeners wanted it to be.

That may not sound revolutionary, but most journalists don’t really listen to readers on what kind of content they be should producing. But for a show like Buzz Out Loud that is so much about interaction and building a community, listening to users is essential. As more journalists embark into social media and beatblogging, it will be important for them to listen to their users.

This doesn’t mean Buzz Out Loud is entirely dictated by its users. The show combines user feedback with the co-hosts’ editorial judgment. We’ve seen this from other beatbloggers like Eric Berger, and it has worked well.

“It’s more of an art more than a science, but you want to listen to that audience all the time, take the temperature of that and kind of inform that with your own judgment,” Merritt said. “If you just did it democratically, and said ‘okay people vote on the stories’, the show wouldn’t be as good.”

Users send in tips about tech news each day, and the show’s co-hosts pick which stories to discuss. If the same news item is sent in several times by various listeners, Merritt said that means it is something that listeners want them to discuss. This has proven a good way to gauge the importance of a tech news story.

The wisdom of the crowd

Experts are one of the biggest benefits to building a strong network like Buzz Out Loud. Buzz Out Loud’s co-hosts cover a variety of tech and science topics that would be hard for any journalist to be an expert on. With the knowledgeable and active user community that Buzz Out Loud has, the co-hosts don’t have to be experts on every topic.

“The listeners of the show that give us feedback really are the fourth or fifth co-host on the show,” Howell said.

Scientists, lawyers, doctors, Web developers, plumbers, carpenters, teachers and more from all over the planet are among the user community. These listeners often call in to add to the conversation or clarify points made on the show. Their contributions are invaluable.

“If we didn’t have Dave the psychologist, Bob the patent lawyer, Dr. Carl, Frank the trademark Lawyer out there to help expand and explain the conversation, it wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable,” Merritt said.

But how does one build a base like Buzz Out Loud has?

“Let’s face it, there is a lot of people who are podcast fans out there that don’t have a podcast of their own going,” Howell said. “So,”If you’re doing a show, and you’re encouraging that feedback and showing them, ‘hey, look, if you give me a valuable nugget you’re going to be a part of this show’, they’ll feel a part of the whole process and they feel special that they actually made it through — that they are being broadcast out to an unknown number of listeners, who are kind of their peers.”

Building a knowledgeable user community is a great way to harness the wisdom of the crowd. In aggregate any journalist’s audience is much more knowledgeable than single person or a small group of people could be.

“The collective brain of the audience is much smarter than you’ll ever be,” Merritt said, “because each one of them only has to know one little bit.”

Buzz Out Loud’s co-hosts have ran with the concept that its users know more than they do. Every day they read e-mails and play voicemails from users. Some of the most in-depth information on the show comes from listeners who are experts on a given topic.

“There is a sense of acknowledging people who know things you don’t,” Del Conte said about playing listener voicemails and reading their e-mails on the show, “because it happens all the time that we get things wrong or we miscalculate or we might ask for expertise in something that we know we don’t already know.”

Some other topics discussed:

• Why did you decide to start Buzz Out Loud? What was the original iteration of the show like?
• How do you build a base like Buzz Out Loud has?
• How is your passion about tech and tech news important to the show?
• Why  does Buzz Out Loud regularly have guest hosts?
• What was it like the first time a listener corrected you?
• How long does it take to put together the show each day?
• What backgrounds do each of the co-hosts have and how did they get into podcasting?
• What can we expect over the next year or two from Buzz Out Loud?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.