The Big 3 Weigh In

Aron Pilhofer of the New York Times lamented his web site’s lack of interesting features, saying it was nothing more than posting the day’s paper online.

“I don’t think we are doing anything smart,” said Pilhofer.  “Who is doing anything smart?’

Jason Manning, a politics editor at the Washington Post, opportunistically threw up his arm, which drew some scattered laughter.  I am inclined to agree that the Post does outdo the Times in its blog content, particularly in the politics field, where they have some great non-stop political junkie content put out by Chris Cilliza in his excellent blog, The Fix.

Michael Owen, a young web producer at the Los Angeles Times offered that his paper is trying to cover the political races through the California perspective: that the state serves as the “ATM” for politicians who raise tremendous amounts of money here, but don’t stay to campaign since we reliably line up in the blue column.

Looking at the L.A. Times site they do in fact have an excellent feature for tracking money found here.  You enter a zip code and can find out who your neighbors are giving money to.  Do you live in a Clinton, Edwards, or Obama neighborhood?  Or in the case of East Los Angeles (90022), a 100% McCain neighborhood (only $1000 has been donated).  Here is your chance to find out. 

The discussion also turned to finding ways to keep blog readers involved.  Drew Clark of the Center of Public Integrity talked about the importance of having interaction through blog comments, pointing out that sites that just allow the comments to add up without addressing any of them quickly lose popularity, while those where the original blogger weighs in on the issues brought up in the comments section prosper.

Colin Delaney of epolitics.com praised slate.com for its comments section, and noted that the site isolates the best reader comments in a section called In the Fray, which allows people to navigate the section without reading hundreds of comments.

However, Martin Wicksol, of the Orange County Register, noted in a side conversation that too much interaction can be a bad thing.  The ocregister.com web site has rules that allow readers to delete comments if three posters agree they are offensive.  Unfortunately, this led to readers banding together to delete the comments of people they did not agree with. 

The LA Times money database is great—I wish they would widgetize it!

- Amy Gahran

I’m inclined to agree as well: Cillizza is great. But it’s not just the lack of interesting features or bloggers I’m lamenting.
I was talking about reader involvement, and I don’t thing we or the Post are doing anything particularly interesting or innovative beyond reader comments… which are, for the most part, launched into the black hole of cyberspace and largely forgotten.
I think we need to find ways to bring readers into the newsroom, to interact with us and each other in ways that further our journalistic mission. Comments don’t do that.
That is my comment.
Oh, the irony.

Then to make this site interactive, allow me to address your comment...perhaps the answer to this problem is to make interactive forums/chat rooms that people can join up to talk about a particular article or blog post.  Even without that, I think some comment boards do at least give the reader some sense of interaction/clarification over some issues.  Perhaps the best way to take advantage of these chats is to copy slate, and sift through them and post the most relevant, just as the dead-tree paper prints reader’s letters