BrianManzullo.com

Publish2 aims to supplant the Associated Press, reinvent the news exchange with ‘P2X’

It isn’t often I write blog posts on back-to-back days, but I couldn’t resist after Publish2 revealed its newest project at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday in New York City.

The project is called P2X. Or, in longer form, the Publish2 News Exchange. Its goal? “Craigslist” the Associated Press.

The idea behind P2X is to allow news and blogging organizations to easily and efficiently share and distribute content among multiple platforms. Instead of using the Associated Press for wire content, newspapers can use the News Exchange as an alternative to find content from other newspapers and even blogs — for a much cheaper price, if any. Publish2 founder Scott Karp introduced the project Monday (video), and it became a finalist in the Disrupt conference’s Startup Battlefield competition.

The more I think about it, the more intrigued I am about this development. Why? Not necessarily because of how much money it could save news companies (although that’d be a huge plus, if P2X can develop a thriving web of news organizations and blogs). Instead, I’m thinking about how much more efficient content sharing can be between news organizations, and how much more vibrant their products can be because of that.

I talked about my love for newspapers in an earlier post, and that I’m also well aware of their future (or lack thereof). But Karp realizes the reality of the news industry right now — print is still a staple in most communities and newsrooms. And even now, Publish2 knows it has to support the print operation while it lasts. (I love how Karp put it during his presentation, when asked how relevant his new service will be when news orgs start going online only: “(We’re) creating that strong relationship now by helping them with their business today.” It’s marketing 101.)

So how would P2X benefit newspapers over AP in terms of content? I like how Jay Rosen put it on Twitter: It’s an extension to print of “Do what you do best, and link to the rest.” The AP is a collective of more than 1,500 news publications producing content, but every story through the wire goes through one identity — the AP. To me, P2X is giving newspapers the opportunity to refresh its content curation (particularly for Sunday editions, which tend to feature a lot of syndicated content) and enforce their brand by taking away the middle man. Furthermore, it opens the door for content from blogs such as TechCrunch to make it to print, which is an excellent idea because, contrary to the old-media belief, blogs can provide high-quality content!

Like I said, this development especially benefits the Sunday newspaper, which many news organizations use to curate Associated Press stories. The Grand Rapids Press is one of them. P2X can refresh those pages. There is a lot more value to stories in the paper when they are curated from a wide variety of sources and respected brands. Furthermore, newspapers can use this opportunity to link their print product with their online product. How? Curate stories in your print product and tell your readers to go online and find out what else you’re reading. Like what you’re reading in the paper? See what else we’re reading online, in real time. Do what you do best — report local news, localize national news and provide commentary — and link to the rest.

There are still a number of questions to address with P2X as it gets started, however. I thought William P. Davis brought a good one up on Twitter: What about the weather and sports agate? A great part of the AP’s value is providing this sort of specialized content for news organizations. Can P2X provide a consistent, efficient alternative to those? Furthermore, it’s going to be interesting to see how many newspapers and blogs subscribe to this network over time, and how many of them are going to really take advantage of it. How many entities will charge for content use, and how widespread will they share their content? How many of them will actually drop the AP in favor of P2X over the next year? Two years? Five?

Answers to some of those may come with time, but questions are important to bring up if P2X is going to be successful in disrupting the AP which, despite its flaws, is the largest news organization in the world. I’m fully rooting for P2X, however. It’s a simple, but excellent idea at the core, and it provides news companies a way to easily organize its wire content, share its own and build a brand online among news providers. Oh, and it’s a much cheaper operation for all parties involved.

More links related to the P2X announcement and TC Disrupt:

• Karp explains the business model behind P2X after it was named one of the three finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt (go to about the 8:50 mark).
• “AP ripe for disruption by Web platform,” by Jack Lail, an adviser of Publish2.
• Follow TC Disrupt on Twitter by searching the hashtag #TCDisrupt.

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What reporters and newspapers can learn from the Phoenix Suns

First, a disclosure: I’ve been a Phoenix Suns fan since the mid-’90s, the days of Charles Barkley, Dan Majerle and Kevin Johnson. So I’ve been following them a long time, and especially now, since they’re in the Western Conference Finals.

The Suns also reached the conference finals in 2005 and 2006, both losing efforts — but this year has been a particularly interesting experience. On the sports side of it, it’s because when this team is doing well (I say that because this series hasn’t exactly shown much of it), it is contagious to watch. The Suns play at a fast pace and with some of the best chemistry I’ve seen in a long time out of the NBA.

This year, there’s another side to it: The networking side. The Suns, from the organization down to the players, are showcasing a great use of social networking and communication.

I’ll explain, starting from the top.

The organization

Every team in the NBA and other major sports has a Twitter account they use to link to stories, provide updates and sometimes retweet players and fans. The Suns organization uses theirs better than most. It uses a universal account, @PhoenixSuns, and it doesn’t just use it to spread team news. It regularly does promotions, holds contests for tickets (even to playoff games!) and retweets its fans, among other things. There’s no face to the account, but the organization still gets on ground level and interacts with its audience — a lot.

The Suns’ vice president of interactive services, Jeramie McPeek, explains on Twitter interaction (watch the entire video, it’s a great peek at what they do):

Be relevant, be transparent, give them sort of a behind-the-scenes look into your world … and after awhile, they’ll start to appreciate that and feel connected to you and want to follow you and tell their friends about you, and it just kind of spreads virally from there.

Another thing I love: The Suns organization gets its employees involved, too. Have them be “brand ambassadors,” as McPeek says.

All of this needs to apply to more organizations, particularly in news. When I look at a newspaper’s Twitter feed, I don’t want to see a rehashed RSS feed of headlines. If I want today’s headlines, I’ll go to your Web site. What makes Twitter so useful, as we’ve established, is how it allows us to connect with millions of people on a simple interface and interact with them. Mix in some news headlines every now and then, especially breaking news as it develops, but get your followers involved by talking with them, retweeting, holding promotions/contests, etc. Easy.

The players

Another dynamic to the 2010 Suns’ playoff run: Now I can follow players on Twitter, such as Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Amar’e Stoudemire, Jason Richardson (who’s from my hometown of Saginaw, Mich.) and Jared Dudley.

Typically, players will use their account to interact with friends, other players and sometimes talk to a fan or two. But I was really impressed by one of Jared Dudley’s tweets Friday night (right).

The Suns, down 2-0 after two tough losses in Los Angeles, were basically back to the drawing board last week. They had little success in shutting down Kobe and the Lakers’ big men (Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom), and their shooting rarely got going, except for a run in the third quarter of Game 2 that tied the game entering the fourth. So they went to work in the three days between games.

Dudley comes off the bench for Phoenix, but he has quickly become one of my favorite players, in part because of his interaction in interviews and with fans. Most professional basketball players wouldn’t think of asking fans what they think their team needs to do to win. Not only did Dudley do that, but he retweeted several responses. He said he received more than 600 replies and said his teammates would read them as well. The adjustments they made, whether influenced by fans, seem to have paid off so far — the Suns won Game 3 and have a chance to even the series Tuesday.

Interaction is key

Newspapers around the country are trying to find ways to better connect to today’s audience. While some are having success at using their Twitter account with some versatility, many really should take a page from the Suns’ playbook.

What they are succeeding at is bridging unity between the organization, the players and the fans.

The Suns are closing the gap between themselves (including the players) and their audience, the same sort of gap that is ever so wide between news companies and readers. And the timing, with this being playoff season, is impeccable. While reaching the Western Conference Finals certainly helps liven up a fan base, so does reaching out to them and listening to them. The more connected the fans feel, the louder they’ll scream at games, the more loyal they’ll stay to your organization.

The Phoenix Suns — from the top of the organization down to the beloved players on the court — are setting a standard news companies should achieve.

Oh — and to the team — good luck the rest of the series! I’ll be watching a couple thousand miles away.

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We know where journalism’s going — but don’t forget about the newspaper just yet

(Nothing spectacular here; just wanted to put a thought down while I had it. I may expand on this later.)

I’ve spent the majority of this week training for my second stint at The Grand Rapids Press, learning the new system workflow it implemented since last summer. Between that and settling in on the northwest side of the city, I haven’t had too much time to really relax and read something.

But today was a bit different — Michigan is finally receiving sunny, mid-70s weather. In fact, it’s going to stay that way for the majority of the next week. So I grabbed something to eat, a drink, and a newspaper and sat outside.

Yup. A newspaper.

Being a Web guy who hears a lot of people call it prehistoric thinking, I have to get this off my chest: I love the newspaper. Even in 2010, when there are so many more efficient ways of delivering and curating the news, not to mention public forums, part of me is still partial to the print edition. Part of it is because I grew up reading newspapers. Part of it is because I can’t stand to read on a screen all day. But for years, the newspaper has been a community staple far and wide and, despite the shift that journalism is currently making, it still is — for now.

As I have repeated in previous blog posts, I went to college for five years in Mount Pleasant, a somewhat rural community compared to the cities other universities call home. About 23,000 people live there, and the biggest building in the area is probably the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort on the outskirts. I wouldn’t say it’s a closed-in community, since it’s home to a public university, but Mount Pleasant is very connected within itself. And from surveying people and living there for five years, the print editions of Central Michigan Life and the local paper, the Morning Sun, dominate their respective Web presentations.*

So what’s my point? Despite all the talk about how newsrooms need to move forward (which they do), sometimes we forget our readers need to move forward, too. And they’re going to do it at their own pace, sometimes even if you offer much more content and versatility online. We can try and entice print readers to move online for their news but, even in 2010, for many people, local news from the newspaper (and perhaps the 5 o’clock news) is all they need.

That’s still the case, largely, in Mount Pleasant. I know it’s probably different in bigger metropolitan areas. Students read CM Life’s newspaper in between classes, in class or at lunch. The Morning Sun still sells thousands of copies per day. I’ve debated with several people, including young journalists, a few months ago about why student newspapers don’t move Web-only. For me, it’s Economics 101: if there’s still value to the print product, even if it’s slowly diminishing, why get rid of it altogether? Why “skip to the end,” even if you know, in a general sense, where journalism is going (online)?

Think back to the 1985 film “Back to the Future.” Think of the scene where Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox, one of my favorite actors) performs the crazy guitar solo at his parents’ high school prom. Since the year is 1955, thirty years prior to the present day, nobody on the floor had a clue how to react to the solo. Even the band didn’t know how to react; one member asks McFly, “What do you call that?” His answer: “Rock and roll.”

Think of rock and roll as the Web, in this case, except we’re further along the process. Many people are used to the Web, true, but not everybody, particularly older generations not brought up on the Internet. We’re obviously transitioning to a world where every single person is connected to the Web in some way. There will be a day where the newspaper will come second to the Web among readership. But for many communities, today’s not that day. 2010 is not that year.

News publications have to make the slow transition from print to the web as reader demand changes and, today, that means including both in the process. As we already know, however, this is easier said than done; the biggest problem facing newsrooms today is adapting to a changing industry and figuring out how to make a modern news model profitable. Many don’t know how to ease along the process and sustain the business it has.

One thing, I think, newspapers need to do better: Linking their Web product with their print product. Their greatest advertising engine for their Web site is their print edition, and many don’t take advantage of it. I elaborated more on this in a previous blog post.

Stepping in

I’m primarily working on the sports copy desk at The Press this summer. But my hope is to get involved with the Web, too. I think the Web desk in Grand Rapids is doing a great job at taking advantage of some of the tools it has available, despite operating on what (in my opinion) is a flawed CMS design in MLive. Here’s one example: An interactive map outlining Grand Rapids and the surrounding areas. Visitors can use this map to find hyperlocal news by clicking on their respective neighborhood.

Over the next couple weeks, I’m going to assemble a list of ideas and, perhaps, some goals to complete during my internship, including on the copy desk. I may share them on here, depending on the circumstances. But the goal with every news organization or company I work for is to leave it better than I found it. Let’s see if that happens here, too!

* – This is a comparison of overall print readership with online readership in the Mount Pleasant area.

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As one chapter ends, another one begins

This Saturday marks the end of my college career. Upon the completion of my take-home exam, which has to be turned in 2 p.m. Wednesday, I will graduate from Central Michigan University with a bachelor of science in journalism (news editorial concentration) and a minor in media design, production and technology.

It took me five years and three switches in majors and minors to do it, but it’s finally happening. It probably won’t hit me until August, when I’m not returning to school with many of my other colleagues at Central Michigan Life, where I worked for virtually the entirety of my college career. I started as a news reporter, working my way toward sports and arts/entertainment reporting before becoming Lifeline Editor my sophomore year. I worked as an editor on virtually every desk, including online, before becoming editor in chief last fall.

It’s certainly sad to think that my time at CM Life is over. But I’m ready to move on to new things.

I return May 17 to the Grand Rapids Press, where I spent last summer as a copy editing intern. This time, I’ll start on the sports copy desk and hopefully take a crack at some Web work as the summer progresses. I’ll begin looking for a full-time job once July comes around, preferably as an online producer or a sports reporter (with an online bent). No matter what I do, I want to be a part of journalism’s future. This is such a critical time in the industry, and we need more people thinking forward and not just talking innovative, but being innovative.

A reflection

I hate to be so cliche about my time as editor in chief, but it really was a roller coaster ride. I accomplished many goals I set out for the staff, but failed at several others. We launched a new Web site in August, began livestreams and live chats, unleashed our first extensive multimedia project and set the path for the online movement at our 91-year-old publication. We won our first-ever Online Pacemaker Finalist award this spring (check back in October to see if we’re a winner). Our print edition wasn’t so bad, either, though — it We did run a couple dozen corrections, I was threatened a lawsuit twice, but didn’t have to fire a single staffer.

The part I’m most proud of, however, is the staff returning for the fall. My overarching goal throughout the year was to make sure the newspaper was better off in May than it was in August. And at a student newspaper, where the entire staff circulates every four years, you have to make sure students are in an environment to grow, get better and eventually take the reins and lead their peers. The staff set in place next fall, led by fall editor Jackie Smith, looks like an exciting group, and I can’t wait to see what they do in print and online. I’m sad I can’t be a part of it.

It’s difficult to pick one piece of advice to take from my experience and share. But I think that now — in 2010 — is the time for every student newspaper to get cracking and move forward, something that really should’ve been done a couple years ago. Innovate. Take risks. Break status quo. Even Central Michigan Life as a ways to go in that department. But it’s not something you do overnight — you have to make progress and work toward something. We launched a new Web site last August and followed up with our first-ever livestreams, live chats and the like. Now, hopefully, we can move toward a Web workflow, or developing mobile applications.

No matter what you do, though, never forget about your readers and what they want out of your publication. You’re serving them. Gauge their interests and do what you can to meet them in person. Hold special events, set up a table outside your central park area, hand out newspapers at athletic events — get on ground level and be a part of your community. Live chats and livestreams help (make sure you use those, too), but they don’t replace the intimacy of real-life conversation. That is what really goes a long way toward building trust, reputation and the impact your news outlet has among your audience. The more your publication acts like an ivory tower — “we report it, you read it, you’re welcome” — the smaller it becomes. So get out there.

I’m not the only editor in chief graduating moving on to newer (and hopefully better) things. I asked Alex Byers, outgoing editor in chief of George Washington Hatchet, GWU’s student newspaper, to give his take as well, and he makes some excellent points as well:

When I got elected as The Hatchet’s next EIC in March of 2009, my
predecessor told me that it would be the most difficult and rewarding
year of my life. He was spot on.

At a student news organization, one of the biggest obstacles is the
conceptual difference between student and professional. The term
“student” newspaper implies something less than professional; after
all, when it comes to most fields – athletics, finance, politics – you
wouldn’t expect most student-based organizations to be perfect or as
effective as their older counterparts. In the news business, though,
there is no room for being anything less than professional. Facts are
facts, and accuracy is a necessity – stories that are 85 percent true
aren’t acceptable. Being held to a higher standard than most student
organizations, and doing it with people who are inherently amateur is
no easy task. Which is why it’s all the more rewarding when
you’re successful.

Student journalists today have so many great ideas for innovation and
the future of news. If I could only give one piece of advice to the
next crop of student newsroom leaders, it would be this: Understand
that you won’t accomplish everything you set out to – it’s okay if you
never develop that real-time, dorm-by-dorm Twitter mash-up you
outlined. But if you keep trying new things and pushing the envelope
of how information is presented, you’ll put out a great product and
learn a thing or two in the process.

It isn’t over

Although I am moving past the college chapter of my life, I want to continue engaging with students working with their campus publication and hopefully work toward a brighter future for journalism education.

Why? Because that’s where it all begins. This industry needs young journalists more than ever because of their innovation, their passion and the new perspective they bring, having grown up in a different generation with new technology and new ways of thinking. But they need to be taught to innovate, take risks and break status quo. So many student newsrooms suffer the same exact thing professional newsrooms do — they’re not adapting to 2010. They need to change.

So for those of you involved in journalism education in one way or another — students, faculty, assistants, etc. — let’s stay connected.

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Moving your newsroom workflow to the Web

This is a topic I might elaborate further on in the coming weeks.

I was thinking the other day about how a newsroom should operate its daily workflow, particularly a college newsroom (since, for the time being, I’m editor of one), and how many use the Web for it. When I first began working at CM Life, we operated on NewsEdit Pro and Quark Xpress. Now it’s InCopy and InDesign for their flexibility and the ability to edit copy while designers are at work. My two internships — The Saginaw News and Grand Rapids Press — also introduced me to workflows based around print, with Saginaw using NewsEdit Pro and Grand Rapids also using a form of InCopy/InDesign.

The productivity is no doubt efficient. The problem is the workflow is based around the print operation in a newsroom that’s supposed to think Web-first.

So when is the right time to switch to a Web content management system for your base newsroom workflow?

This is worth repeating, just so you know where I’m coming from: Central Michigan Life is the student paper of a university in a town of 23,000 people (Mount Pleasant). From comparing print and online readership, it is clear that our print audience is still our primary audience. With that in mind, we have to milk our print product while it still has value in the community, especially since most of our advertising revenue comes from print. You can’t just “warp to the end” (i.e. go online-only), even if you know that’s where the future is heading.

So in a newsroom that still values the print product, is it efficient to move to the Web with your workflow? I would certainly consider it. Here’s the comparison between CM Life’s current workflow and a proposed Web workflow (NOTE: CM Life production days are Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday to put out a paper the following day):

CURRENT WORKFLOW:

• Step 1: Reporter works on the story, finishes it and saves it in a document to e-mail to their editor by 11 a.m. on production day. (If they work on it in the newsroom, they save it in InCopy in the server.)
• Step 2: Editor opens the story on production day, edits via InCopy, saves it when they’re done and moves it into the next folder in the process.
• Step 3: Previous process continues with the Managing Editor and the Editor in Chief. Story is then saved into the “To be Placed” folder for the designers, and copied into a “Web Stories” folder.
• Step 4A: The designer places the InCopy document into InDesign. Proofreader reads the printed page, then makes necessary changes on a computer while the designer continues working with other pages.
• Step 4B: While 4A proceeds, news editors take the story in “Web Stories” and copies & pastes it into a new WordPress post, scheduling it for posting depending on timeliness (timely stories go right away).

WEB WORKFLOW:

• Step 1: Reporter works on the story in the Web CMS, no matter when or where they’re at. They write a headline, excerpt, tags and set a category. With their given privileges, they save the draft and notify their editor when it’s ready.
• Step 2: Editor gives the story the first read within 1-2 hours after the story’s done (even on non-production days). They save it, manage any other components and (if the story is time-relevant), they publish it to the Web.
• Step 3: The story goes through the normal editing process on the production day, up through the EIC, and the story is saved to the Web after each edit.
• Step 4: After copy editors/designers receive the story budget for the newspaper on production days, they pull the stories from the Web when they’re ready, save them in InCopy and place them on the pages.

(Notice how one step is removed in the latter flow. Since the stories are already formatted and ready on the Web, the news editors would not have to create new posts at night, and the Web would not be an afterthought during a normal production day)

The pros to moving to a Web CMS are apparent. It is simply more efficient for your 24/7 online operation to base your work around a Web CMS. Reporters, with their own usernames and set privileges, can access the CMS, work with their story and even practice writing headlines, tagging, etc. It also makes it much quicker for an editor to get the story online when it’s timely and valuable — all they have to do is press a button now, rather than Add New Post by scratch, when they’re done editing.

Fact is, a story doesn’t need to go through four edits before it’s posted. This way, you can get a story up quickly, then make necessary edits to the story as you go.

The cons? Internet access is not always available for reporters working outside the newsroom, although that’s quickly changing. Furthermore, while WordPress (our Web CMS) offers plenty of features and flexibility for us to base a workflow around, it is limited in terms of organizing editorial content and interacting with other newsroom personnel efficiently. Those are some of the issues that CoPress’ EditFlow project seeks to rectify, however.

The great thing is that moving to a Web workflow does not take much away from your print product if you still work with one, but can work wonders in boosting your online performance. You’re updating the Web with stories when they’re timely while still going through your core editing process. Thinking long-term, you also can adapt better to changing demands and a changing industry, particularly as print becomes less and less valuable in the community.

I am interested to hear what others have to say on this. What are other student newsrooms using for organizing their content and workflow? If you’ve already moved to the Web, what are your observations, challenges and — most importantly — results?

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Watching from afar what transpires at BCNI

I had this coming weekend circled on my calendar for a couple months — a chance to meet in person some of the most brilliant minds on the future of journalism at BarCamp NewsInnovation in Philadelphia. BCNI is a conference that uses an open-grid format for sessions, allowing virtually anybody who attends to organize an hour-long session if they’d like, right on the scene. No speakers are planned, no presentations are prepared by event organizers — it’s all up to the people who make the trek.

The idea is to get everybody thinking — most journalism conferences hand you an agenda in the beginning with speakers you can listen to and ask one or two questions at the end, if you’d like. BCNI, in part because it forces attendees to help fill the grid of rooms and times with sessions, promotes discussion and participation from everybody that goes. (Kind of parallels the issues we face in the modern journalism business model, huh?)

Unfortunately, a number of things worked against me leading up to the event. I have no one to help me make the 11.5-hour trek to Philadelphia, split hotel costs and attend sessions — everyone I planned to go with dropped out for various reasons. I didn’t have anywhere to stay, and logically I couldn’t afford paying for two nights at a hotel by myself (I have to start paying student loans next month). The selfish part of me knows I’m not the only one struggling to make the trip, although I’d love to see as many big thinkers as possible attend events such as these.

But I will definitely have my laptop open and reading Saturday, when BCNI takes place. Ryan Sholin’s post on BCNI describes it best: “Innovation happens when you put together a group of brilliant minds with real-world knowledge of the ingredients in play.” I want to know what comes out of it, what’s discussed, what new ideas are brought to the table, etc., and perhaps even interact via Twitter if at all possible. Discussions like these are so vital to the transformation of this industry.

Good luck to all of you in Philly this weekend!

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Why an ideal online comments section should not require personal identification

I’ve found the debate over anonymous commenting to be quite interesting.

For me, it first flared up about a week ago, when Mathew Ingram and Howard Owens debated news organizations’ reader commenting policy on Twitter. Should readers have to provide a real identity (first, last name) and possibly a verification of that identity, or should you allow them to be anonymous and only provide a screen name? Ingram, who later posted about this issue in his blog, supports anonymity. Owens does not.

The argument flared brighter when the Cleveland Plain Dealer recently revealed the e-mail address of an anonymous commenter, lawmiss. You can read about the entire situation, in a nutshell, here. In the aftermath of that, the Washington Post recently put up a reader poll on anonymous commenting — 39 percent said readers should be required to identify themselves before posting comments. 47 percent said no.

In a perfect world, everybody would comment with their true identities and everybody would know each other’s specific place in a community. Everyone would put a face behind the name and behind their opinion and help incite a valuable discussion of issues. But let’s be honest. This isn’t a perfect world. One of the biggest issues facing news organizations in regards to their Web sites is how to handle the racket of readers that spew vomit, so to speak, in the comments section. How do you control the personal, illogical and sometimes racist attacks on a Web site?

Many people point straight at the anonymity those readers enjoy, and say the lack of accountability on those commenting allow them to write whatever they desire. My take: You do it by regularly monitoring your comments, approving them before they appear and engaging with your active audience. You don’t do it by taking away anonymity and requiring identity from your readers.

The best example I have to correlate with this issue: Think of bathroom stalls. Their wall conditions always vary — some are completely clean and clear. But others are covered in messages, numbers and drawings. Usually, it has nothing to do with the condition of the rest of the building or even the socioeconomic status of a community, whether you feel you can make those connections or not. I’ve seen real nice establishments have their bathrooms covered in marker and engravings.

Anybody can — anonymously, mind you — take a marker out of their pocket and write a message in a bathroom stall. The question is whether the owner(s) of the establishment, or the maintenance team, is paying attention to it. The more somebody closely monitors and removes markings as soon as they’re written, the more discouraging it is for people to write them. People are more encouraged to write something when they see others have done it. To them, it means whatever they write will stick, too — and others will read it.

Virtually the same thing applies to a comments section on most, if not all, Web sites. If you allow the forum for somebody to write a personal attack against someone, they’ll do it. Yes, anonymity plays a role, but it is not the primary reason why comment sections turn into ghettos. To point at anonymity is missing the point. I’ve seen plenty of message boards and forums that are cespools of valuable discussion and insight — and none of them require identities to be revealed. The secret? Close monitoring of discussion. Moderators/editors even took time to talk with readers. These simple changes to a newspaper’s comments area can bring the section out of the ghetto.

It’s pretty simple, really — A person posting drivel in a comments section has to have an incentive to do it. That incentive, more often than not, is the opportunity for others to read it. Not just because they anonymously can.

Two more arguments that can be made in favor of anonymous commenting:

How do you verify a “true identity”? Any site can make their audience register with a first name, last name and e-mail address before commenting. But it is just as easy for someone to register as John Smith with a random e-mail address they never use. Who is to say true identities are actually being revealed? Furthermore, who is to say those who care to fill this information out is more valuable to your active audience than those who don’t? Some people just prefer not to give first and last names. Which leads me to my second point…

By requiring IDs, you are censoring those who feel uncomfortable providing basic information. If we’ve learned anything from the verbal violence some stories receive, the Internet can be a brutal place. People today are still intimidated by how open it is, and people still feel vulnerable when revealing basic personal information on an open, public forum. Many times, I would argue it has little to do with accountability and more to do with personal comfort. It’s easy for us tech-savvy people to feel comfortable revealing our information in the public forum, but you have to think of your audience. For readers, perception can be reality — and we have to acknowledge that.

One thing I will acknowledge: Whether allowing anomymous commenting is the most effective policy varies newsroom to newsroom. Both sides of this issue could be the right way in different areas. Owens, the publisher of the online-only Batavian in Batavia, N.Y., finds requiring identities works best for his organization. Others employ Facebook Connect, which Ingram calls a “persistent identity agent” — that’s certainly a good way to encourage people to use “real” identities.

It’s not that I’m against real identities. Like I said, in a perfect world, no one would have aliases to hide behind. But there are certain realities that make this issue so much more complex and, to me, it’s much more practical and efficient to allow for anonymity in a discussion and to go about other means of making your comments section lively and without attacks and profanity.

Feel free to comment below with your thoughts. Do you think news organizations should require readers to provide their real identities?

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Linking the print product with the online product: Do your readers know what you offer online?

One part of the online battle for journalists is building an effective Web presence. But it doesn’t mean much if your readers know little about it.

Admittedly, one of Central Michigan Life’s struggles throughout the past year has been consistently promoting its online content. Like most other student newspapers around the country, our only effective promotional tool is our newspaper. And in Mount Pleasant, a city of less than 25,000 people, our print product is still our readers’ main source of news.

We have to use our print product to link our content with the Web, just like we would link in stories online. It’s pretty simple: if you don’t do a good job of telling readers the benefits of regularly checking your Web site, they won’t go to your site. (It kind of goes without saying that they won’t go if you don’t deliver on those benefits, either)

A couple signs I’m seeing that point to readers not engaging enough with us at the moment: Zero responses on many of our conversation starters on Facebook, and fewer constructive comments on the Web site’s stories (although the Leadership Institute story we ran generated a lot of talk).

Over break, I tossed around a couple ideas on what CM Life can do to better tell readers what they can find online that they won’t find by reading the paper. Obviously, you want to promote your videos, slideshows and other multimedia content. But we’re also active on Twitter and Facebook, too, and want to find ways to interact as much as possible with the community.

The “What’s on the Web” rail on the right was what I came up with (full paper here). It’s right on the front page, along part of the left side. In a nutshell, it pinpoints a discussion topic on Facebook, who to follow on Twitter and why, and what’s new in multimedia. Since we don’t have a live chat scheduled yet, we asked for readers to submit suggestions to our Online Editor on who they’d like to talk to.

We’ll more than likely customize the way this looks as we go along the rest of the semester, including a variation that runs along the bottom if the design calls for it. I may look to add something related to Web site comments (Comment of the Day, perhaps? We already run featured comments on our Voices page) But this, basically, was what I had in mind — a starting point for the discussion and important campus issues to go online. We’ll also continue working toward linking print stories as much as possible with extraneous online content (whether it’s multimedia, PDF documents, etc.).

I’ll probably update later this week or next week on whether we’re seeing any sort of response from this initiative. It may be a difficult thing to measure, but it’ll be interesting to see how print-only readers respond. I’m looking for more Facebook/Twitter interaction and, hopefully, more involvement in Web site comments.

If you’re working for a student newspaper, feel free to share what your staff is doing to promote Web content. Do you find your audience responding to a heightened Web presence? What else is your newspaper doing to promote Web content/discussion?

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