This week we examine some new ways to get people talking.

You’ll see some familiar faces and a new one. All three are beat bloggers worth flowingly on a daily basis. They have so many lessons to teach us all. 

We tackle cultivating communities and the wisdom of the crowd this week. Keep sending those nominees in!

Jon Ortiz | Sacramento Bee

• Ortiz recently launched a cool new feature, “blog backs.” It’s a great feature to spur better communication and conversations with users.
• This is how Ortiz describes blog backs: “review your thoughtful and provocative online comments, amplify points, answer questions, correct our mistakes and humbly accept your warranted criticism.”
• He takes good comments from users, elevates them and then responds to them. He also links back to the original post that spurred each comment. 
• This feature is a bit like hoisting comments. But the added twist of responding to and clarifying users comments makes this a much richer feature.

Brian Krebs | The Washington Post

This week’s Leaderboard features beat bloggers who know how to cultivate their online communities and who listen to the wisdom of their users.

Cultivating a community is the first step. The best beat bloggers create a community where knowledgeable people come to share ideas and discuss content. That’s what these beat bloggers have done.

The next level is then listening to what your wise users have to say. The best beat reporters know that in aggregate the wisdom of their readers far outstrips their own knowledge. Beat blogging gives beat reporters avenues to harness that wisdom. 

In the case of one beat blogger this week, he asked his readers to be his assignment editor. You know what? His readers came up with some dynamite story ideas. 

Ed Silverman | Pharmalot

• Silverman is one of the most prolific beat bloggers I’ve ever seen. He posts a lot of high quality content throughout the day, and his blog reaches far beyond The Star-Ledger’s circulation area.
• One of the most impressive parts of Pharmalot is the comments that are left after posts. Silverman has attracted a community of experts and industry insiders. He has actively cultivated a strong community, and Pharmalot is one of the strongest examples of why news organizations need to allow user comments.
• The beat model seems to encourage better conversations. Pharmalot is a blog dedicated to the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmalot doesn’t attract the same kinds of trolls that show up on general interest stories. Plus, Silverman is very active in the comments. That always leads to better conversations.

Jon Ortiz | Sacramento Bee

• Ortiz got off to a hot start by launching his blog early to report on the financial budget shortfall in California. The initial budget shortfall was solved, but the financial crisis is hitting California hard again.
• Not only is Ortiz providing great coverage of this situation, but he is also encouraging discussions on his blog.
• Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposals to reign in the budget are drawing strong comments from employees and citizens of California. Ortiz captured some of the best opinions in a recent blog post and used them as a catalyst for more people to comment. He can then take some of those new comments that are written on his blog and make posts and stories out of them.

Eric Berger | Houston Chronicle

• Berger asked his readers to tell him which stories they would like to see him cover. He took the best ideas and put them to a vote. Want to know what your readers think? Ask them.
• Berger’s beat attracts a lot of knowledgeable and educated people. The top story ideas they came up with all would make for strong enterprise stories. Berger is currently committed to doing at least the top two stories (both energy related) that his readers voted on. This has been a great way for Berger to hear what his readers think and also find great story ideas.
• Berger’s readers are always posting links and making suggestions. A blogger like Berger would be foolish to ignore all the knowledge that his readers leave on his blog.

“Despite what might happen to our industry, despite what form it will take, despite the business model, people will always want to know what is going on and will always want to have an intelligent conversation. They just need to be empowered to do so.”

For Monica Guzman, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s first online reporter, empowering people is a major way to cultivate comments and build a community. She runs The Big Blog, a blog dedicated to keeping tabs on what’s happening in Seattle and the Seattle blogosphere.

“I’m convinced that newspapers need to rise up and take responsibility not just for the quality of the news, but for the quality of the conversation,” Guzman said.

Guzman believes newspapers need to cultivate comments. She is a fan of hoisting comments and is working on implementing a comment of the week feature.

“It tells readers that you are listening,” Guzman said about hoisting comments. “You’re actually watching what they say. And it rewards readers for being smart and actually taking the time to make their comments useful and intelligent.”

Guzman is surprised about how much people care about the news.

“As soon as people are empowered with their own tools like blogging tools and a publishing platform like the Internet, [it's amazing] to see how many people will take the opportunity to become reporters for their own blocks,” Guzman said. “And I just think that’s a beautiful thing.”

When she first started there were a handful of community blogs, but now a new one pops up every month. Part of what she does is link to other bloggers and keep tabs on the blogosphere.

Guzman knows that some of her editors are uncomfortable with the ethic of collaboration. Many journalists are still stuck in the competition mindset.

“I love the blogging ethic of collaboration and I hate the ethic of competition,” she said.

One time Guzman wanted to link to a Seattle Times story because her paper didn’t have the story. At first her editors didn’t want her to do so because that was the competition’s work, but she insisted. Her editors eventually said if the PI doesn’t have a story, she can link to the Times as a last resort.

“When it comes down to it, sometimes your competing paper will write a good story that you didn’t write,” she said. “I wanted to become a trusted guide for my readers for what’s interesting going on in Seattle. How can I be trusted as a good guide if there is some sort of curtain over our competitor?”

Can you imagine a blog without links?

Much more is tackled in part 1 of my interview with Guzman.

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

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 their 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.