comment moderation, Comments, cultivating conversations, Eric Berger, podcasting, SciGuy, video

Audio interview with Eric Berger on building an online community

Eric Berger, the SciGuy over at the Houston Chronicle, has had success building a blog with a strong community around it.

Building a community requires hard work and dedication. It takes a blogger who embraces two-way communication. Just writing print stories online won’t build a community, but it doesn’t take crazy ideas to get people interacting on a blog.

“Simple things like ending a post with a question,” Berger said. “Once you get people commenting, they feel compelled to come back.”

Building a community involves a lot of reader interaction. Berger gets a lot of reader comments on his blog, and he moderates the blog himself. Plus, Berger tries to respond as much as possible to comments on his blog.

Moderating comments can take a lot of time, especially with contentious issues like global warming, intelligent design and others.

“It does take time to moderate, but it makes for a much better community,” Berger said.

His paper has unmoderated comments on stories and the discussion and community isn’t the same. Often the comments on stories quickly devolve into banal arguments. Berger believes interacting with users keeps the discussion more on topic and less inflammatory.

“If people know that someone is going to read what they’re writing and perhaps judge them, they’ll be more careful with what they write,” Berger said. “It’s good in the sense that people recognize that there is going to be a presence of someone in there.”

What hasn’t worked for Berger: podcasting and video. He could do 3-4 blog entries in the same time he could do one video, and more people would look at the blog posts. Podcasting was a lot of effort for a few hundred people to listen to.

His blog, on the other hand, usually generates 100,000+ page views a month.

Berger also gives advice on why you should blog.

“It really does improve your reporting of the beat,” Berger said.

But he cautions that if you don’t want to blog and build a community, you won’t be successful. Building a community takes time and effort. You have to want to do it.

Check out the full interview for Berger’s thoughts on building an online community around a beat.

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

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Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:17 - by Patrick Thornton

Daniel Victor, Patriot-News

Beatblogging success story: The “Open for Business” sign

From Daniel Victor’s personal blog.

“I love the beatblogging project because it’s innovation in real newsroom laboratories, as opposed to tsk-tsking and dreaming.

My foray into it has had its ups and downs, but I recently had a kind of success story that I didn’t expect when I signed up.

And it shows why I believe so much that social networking can revolutionize small-town beat reporting.

A woman in the town I cover believed that she had spotted an
injustice. (I won’t go into detail for competitive reasons, and because
my work on the possible story is ongoing.)

But she didn’t know what to do with this knowledge, so like any
other computer user, she turned to Google. She typed in the name of a
resident in town who her neighbors had recommended, a person who might
know what to do with this information.

One of the first results took her to The Hershey Home, the Ning network I set up for the beatblogging project. The resident she sought has been a frequent contributor to the network.

Once there, she strolled around the site. She read all of my
solicitations for story ideas, background information on stories I was
already working on, and feedback for stories I’ve already written. She
went ahead and e-mailed me to set up a meeting.

After she spilled the beans at our meeting, I asked her why she contacted me.

“I just read through your comments on the site, and you seemed like
the type of person who would want to hear this,” she responded.

Imagine that! I may have stumbled upon a high-impact story based on a tip from a person who isn’t even a member of the network.
She chose to contact a reporter because the network put up an “Open for
Business” sign,  and revealed that I have a genuine interest in hearing
from as many residents as possible.

An obligatory listing of our e-mail address at the end of our
stories doesn’t invite our readers to contact us, it just allows them
to. Setting up this kind of network, interacting with people online,
and really advertising that we really, really do want to hear from
people can directly lead to stories.”

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008 11:02 - by David Cohn

Mary Louise Schumacher

Covering urban design in the Midwest – An Update from Affiliate Beat Blogger

Below is an update from: Mary Louise Schumacher. 

As I think I mentioned in my introduction as an associate beat blogger, the architecture/urban design part of my beat is quite new.

I have made one decision — to create my network around the subject of urban design. A subject that’s about the literal fabric of the community seems so suited to the beat blogging approach and it lends itself to a wider breadth of voices than, say, a network around visual art would.

In any case, I have been going about the business of reaching out to new sources the old fashioned way, by grabbing quick meetings over coffee and lunch. But, as I make these connections, I’ve been sharing
my vision for a network, which would include architects, city planners, academics, artists, developers, neighborhood association leaders, and so on.

The response has been whole hearted enthusiasm and offers of help. The take away: some face-to-face chats with the would-be network has been a great source of ideas for how to build the network. And it’s
building buzz, too. Key people are on board, some are recruiting others and I’ve got a notebook full of topics for discussion. One architectural firm offered to host a reception for the group on their roof top overlooking Milwaukee’s river and skyline.

I realize that today’s excitement may not result in tomorrow’s participation, but I believe it may help give the network a proper launch.

In the meantime, I continue to send out a weekly email newsletter that provides links back to my Art City blog, which is one-stop shopping for all of my art and architecture content, recommendations for the
weekend, previews of what’s ahead and so on. I’ve been doing this, I think, for nearly two years now and have nearly 2,000 subscribers. I promote this newsletter when I can in my tag line at the end of stories and in the blog. I’ve also (thanks to Dave’s advice!) recently started using Twitterfeed to send automatic updates from the blog out to Twitter and Facebook.

For such a sizable list, I don’t get as much direct communication as I’d like. But I’m realizing I need to more consciously set out to engage people.

Two other very quick things. Several reporters at the paper are looking at ways to innovate. We’ve been producing proposals for several months now. Last week, we produced a proposal on beat blogging
(with a lot of support material from the efforts some of you have made and from the Beat Blogging Blog) and solicited specific proposals from the newsroom. The hope is to get more people experimenting with these
tools and to raise awareness about how they can improve our reporting and connections to the community.

Lastly, I wanted to share a project with you that I cooked up before I joined this group. It’s very much in its beta phase still. But I’d love your feedback. It’s not precisely beat blogging, but the core
concepts are there. Here it is: http://www.jsonline.com/links/inthemaking.

So, there’s my update. I’d love to hear more about how all of you are doing. Has anyone come up with some new strategies for incorporating all of these things into the day?

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Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:51 - by David Cohn

Interview – Beth Kanter: Learning from the Nonprofit World

Learning to beat blog is really about learning how to do online organizing. That is not unique to journalism. It’s a skill/mind set that nonprofits, politicians, individuals and all sorts of industries need to learn.

One great teacher is Beth Kanter. She is fantastic at explaining the basics of how one should start to approach online organizing and social media. Below she explains the "cute dog theory."

Continue…

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Monday, June 2, 2008 11:18 - by David Cohn

Eric Berger, guest blogging, Houston Chronicle, SciGuy

Taking science to the people. Help wanted.

Sometimes it’s better to just let the beat blogger say it for themselves.

Check out what Eric Berger is doing at the Houston Chronicle.

This is no small feat. Eric is recruiting local science experts to create and maintain blogs covering their specific fields of interest. As “science” is a huge study ranging from meterology, biology and all kinds of ‘ologies’ – Eric could theoretically create a vast blog network.

But conditions on the ground suggest that Berger should take it slow – one blog at a time. The first blog, Atmo.Sphere, looks like a great start. It’s described as “climate conversation with John Nielsen-Gammon and Barry Lefer.”

What does this development mean?

Eric is building a network. “The goal of these changes is to provide a neutral space for scientists
and the general public to meet and speak on the issues of the day.
There are blogs by scientists for scientists, and there are blogs aimed
at the general public. I’m aiming for a hybrid site where people can
get their questions answered by real, live scientists, where scientists
can get feedback, and everyone can find a bit of daily zen.”

The hard part is yet to come. Eric will have to keep the bloggers motivated and make them feel like part of his posse. A follow up post may talk with people at the Chron to find out what technology is driving this, but as always, technology is second to people power. The real effort was Eric finding a science blogger to dedicate themselves towards this project.

Read more from Eric to find out what he is looking for and what he hopes to get out of the experiment.
(yes, I really want you to click that link, because it’s a fantastic pitch to get the public involved in journalism)

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Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:57 - by David Cohn

DISD, Kent Fischer

Does Your School Have Supplies? Tap A Network of Parents to Find Out

clipped from dallasisdblog.dallasnews.com We’re hearing there seems to be a wee bit of a toilet paper shortage around the district. It’s not unusual, as the school year winds down, for schools to run low on supplies. Copy paper, for instance, is at a premium every spring. This year, TP and paper towels are on many most wanted lists. We asked our beatbogging volunteers to check out the situation at their schools. Click the jump to read their dispatches. North Dallas High: Toilet paper ok, but today we don’t have copier paper. Townview: It has been reported to me that two weeks ago in one women’s restroom in Townview, that no toilet paper was to found.  It was a big restroom, with about 12 stalls. I have also been informed that some stalls are always short of toilet paper. A South east Dallas elementary: We ration toilet paper. Some teachers have brought their own in. What we are woefully low on is paper towels. It’s really, really tragic. Our lead custodian tells me that he’s been told he doesn’t have any more money in his budget.

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Thursday, May 1, 2008 9:26 - by David Cohn

How We Use Twitter for Journalism – Read Write Web

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com How useful can communication limited to 140 characters be for serious journalism?  It turns out that the short messages you find on Twitter have proven wildly useful for some writers penning larger pieces.  I did an interview on the BBC last week with some traditional journalists about Twitter and they scoffed at the idea that it could be useful.  "Well," one said after I talked about how we’ve used it, "I certainly won’t be checking it out."  Hmph! The scoffers can scoff all they want, but here at RWW our use of Twitter so far has included: the discovery of breaking stories, performing interviews,  quality assurance  and promotion of our work.

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Monday, April 28, 2008 2:24 - by Patrick Thornton

Twitter – what are you doing in your newsroom? What would you like to do?

clipped from onlinejournalismblog.com OK, so everyone is on Twitter. Let’s take stock. I’d like to know what you’re doing with the tool as a journalist and in your newsroom – or what you’d like to do. Oh, and what good examples of its use have you seen? Comment away – let’s see if we can’t compile a useful collection of examples, experiences and ideas.

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008 14:13 - by Patrick Thornton

Interview – M.G. Siegler from Venture Beat

One of the first reporters I interviewed for the ongoing series of "lessons from reporters" was Eric Eldon from Venture Beat.

I continue to argue that the super-tech blogs like VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Read Write Web, Mashable, GigaOm and others are setting the pace for what journalism will be in the future. Whether they adopt the language ‘beat blogging’ is irrelevant, they are doing it. Their reporters are connected digitally, they are light on their keyboards and that’s why they constantly scoop newspaper tech sites.

While it makes sense for them to use digital tools to cover their beat, which is technology itself, as the younger generations grow older and continually play out their lives online – reporters whose beats are education, hospitals, etc will increasingly need to be networked online to keep abreast of their beat.

The video interview with M.G. Siegler below is a bit dark. I apologies. It was too loud in the art gallery where I met him to do the interview inside and too dark outside – I opted for dark over loud. It’s a four minute interview – skip the first 25 seconds if you are super crunched for time, but I highly recommend watching the rest if you are at all curious about: Twitter, social news sites, finding new stories, Mixx, or the higher level question of whether or not all this translates to beats outside of tech.

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Monday, April 7, 2008 9:08 - by Patrick Thornton

Insight into Beat Blogging for TechCrunch

clipped from www.techcrunch.com What we do at TechCrunch is actually pretty simple.  We write about Web startups and the larger tech companies that try to either copy or acquire them. Depending on the day, I could be liveblogging the launch of the Amazon Kindle, arguing about free speech in the Internet age, uncovering secret projects at Google, giving Yahoo unsolicited acquisition advice, or writing about a hot new startup. But we live or die by how fast we can post after a story breaks, if we can’t break it ourselves.  More often than not, putting up partial information is what leads us to the truth—a source contacts us with more details or adds them directly into comments. We certainly cover the news and do original reporting, but we also discuss news reported by others and are not shy about voicing our personal opinions.  We are as much a filter as a source. Because what is a blog?  It is a conversation with readers.  And you don’t have to start a conversation knowing all the facts.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 11:55 - by Patrick Thornton

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