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.

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.

One, Buzz Out Loud, is primarily a podcast that also combines a blog, forum, wiki and other technology to help cover their beat. The other is a beat reporter who has added a weekly podcast, live chats and other new media tools to help cover his beat better.

Our last nominee is a familiar face. He’s one of the best, each and every week.

Buzz Out Loud

• Molly Wood, Tom Merritt and Jason Howell have created one of the most popular podcasts, and it didn’t happen for no reason. It has great content, it’s very informative and it’s enjoyable to listen to. A big part of that enjoyability are the daily e-mails and voicemails from listeners that make it into the show. Wood, Merritt and Howell respond to those and often provide clarification or commentary.
• This show wouldn’t be possible without its listeners. Every day people send in tips about new tech, experiences they have had, insider information, etc. The show was originally around five minutes long and was aired every other day. Now the show regularly runs 35-45 minutes each day. Producing that much quality content each day isn’t easy, but the shows listeners help out by sending in tips and information.
• The BOL gang regularly interact with users in other formats. The show has its own forums. and Wood, Merritt and Howell are no strangers to it. Even cooler is the live chat that happens when the show is recorded live each day. Listeners regularly help the BOL gang out. For instance, a news article they are discussing may talk about some complicated technology that they don’t fully understand, but a listener in the chat room might be able to shed light on the subject. Other times listeners help provide clarification. It’s like having live fact checkers and life lines. 
• This is an excellent example of journalists and a knowledgeable community working together. Buzz Out Loud has a lot of very intelligent, well read and tech savvy users. Buzz Out Loud wouldn’t be half the show without its fans, but together they have created one of the best podcasts on the Web today.

Eric Page | Quad-City Times

• We’re sad to see Page leaving journalism for a Web career, but we wish him the best of luck. He did a great job of innovating on his Iowa Hawkeyes beat over at the Times’ Hawkmania site.
• His weekly live chats, podcasts and blogging are an inspiration to all beat reporters. Page covered his beat with incredible depth. He was also able to connect with fans through his chats and blogging.
• Sports is a great beat to branch out into new media. People especially love live chats with beat reporters. These live chats attract a lot of people to them (and run up time spent stats), and yet they are poplar in archive form too. Podcasts can make a lot of sense too (especially from an advertising perspective), and blogging obviously makes sense.
• Page is truly a multimedia reporter. 

Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle

• We’d like to congratulate Berger on his 50,000th comment. What makes this milestone even more impressive is that Berger approves every comment. This partly explains why the comments are so good on his blog. 
• But it doesn’t explain it all. Berger is one of the best at cultivating a community. If you only read his blog posts, you’d be missing out on all the great debate, links and discovery in the comments under each post. 
• People ask me all the time why they should spend some of their time responding to comments, when they could be writing more posts or stories. This is an easy answer. Not only will you get much more insightful and less vitriolic comments, but you’ll also help build a community of loyal users. The kind of loyal users that will send you tips and links. The kind of loyal users that will help make your job easier.
• How many beat reporters do you know who would say this, “This blog wouldn’t be what it is without the excellent and devoted participation of those who participate. So if you’ve commented during the last 40 months, thank you. And if you’re just lurking, what are you waiting for?”
• Well, Berger means it when he says that because he has cultivated a strong community where his users are a big part of what makes his blog special. 
• As a general rule of thumb, if the comments are terrible on your blog and stories, it’s probably your thought. A little attention goes a long way.