Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Rich Gordon
Associate Professor, Medill School, Northwestern University
Director of New Communities, Media Management Center
www.mediamanagementcenter.org/newcommunities
© 2008 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved. No part of this document
may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior, written permission of
the Newspaper Association of America.
The Online
Community Cookbook
Recipes for building audience interaction
at newspaper Web sites
Successful online community initiatives require a plan. The plan starts with
identifying a target audience and understanding its needs for online commu-
nity capabilities. Only then should specific technologies be considered.
Social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook have built huge audi-
ences, but their lessons for newspaper sites may be modest. They are attract-
ing large audiences and considerably more loyalty than newspaper Web sites, but this
appears largely to be due to their core audiences of teenagers and college students,
who are at a point in their lives when relationships with friends are central to individual
identity.
While online conversations can get unpleasant, they can also be successfully
moderated and kept on track. Choosing the right technology model, requir-
ing some degree of registration and devoting staff resources to online communities
are among the key steps to success.
Online communities can generate new revenue. Newspapers are finding cre-
ative ways to build businesses around online communities, selling targeted
banner ads and experimenting with new ingredients such as business directories with
social-network features.
More information and other sections of this report are available at on NAA’s Web site at
www.naa.org/digitaledge/cookbook.
– Rich Gordon
Associate Professor, Medill School, Northwestern University
Director of New Communities, Media Management Center
www.mediamanagementcenter.org/newcommunities
Weblogs, or blogs, which developed during the early 2000s and enabled com-
munities to form around particular writers and also to revolve around groups
of blogs connected through links.
In recent years, the term “online community” seems mostly to have been displaced in favor
of more contemporary buzz phrases such as Web 2.0, social media, citizen journalism and
user-generated content. This report, however, will use the
older, broader concept of “online communities” to refer to
online sites and services that allow multiple people to create
and share content, communicate with one another and build
definition
relationships with other participants.
For news organizations, this definition is broad enough to
include some kinds of blogs and blog networks, discussion
online communities ~
forums, user comments on articles and blog posts, photo noun: online sites and
sharing sites, review and rating services, and social network
sites. services that allow multiple
This report will steer away from the terms “user-generated
content” (which doesn’t seem to encompass interpersonal people to create and share
communication or relationship building) and “citizen
journalism” (which means different things to different people content, communicate
and, at best, refers to just a small fraction of the content
published by Internet users).
with one another and build
Whatever terms are used, it is important to point out that relationships with other
online users have varying appetites for online activities and
interactions. The most active are self-publishers, creating blogs participants
or other kinds of Web sites where they post original content.
© 2008 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.
6
Others might just comment on what others have posted. Many just “lurk” – reading, viewing and/or listening to
what others have to say rather than publishing themselves. Many online users don’t even do that much.
Forrester Research, the research and consulting firm, has conducted surveys that quantify the kinds of “social
computing” activities engaged in by Internet users. According to Forrester1, 52 percent of online adults are
“inactives” – they don’t even read blogs or watch user-generated video. Forrester’s research also found the
following categories of all online adults (listed in order from least active to most active participation):
Spectators (33 percent of all online adults): Read or view content created by others, but don’t
create it themselves.
Joiners (19 percent of all online adults): Use social networking sites such as MySpace or Face-
book.
Collectors (15 percent of all online adults): Collect and categorize information by using RSS
feeds or sharing bookmarks on sites such as del.icio.us.
Critics (19 percent of all online adults): Comment on content or post ratings/reviews on sites
like Amazon.com.
Creators (13 percent of all online adults): Publish a Web site or blog, or upload content to sites
such as YouTube.
These are not discrete categories. Joiners may also be Collectors. Critics may also be Creators. It is also
important to note that demographics – especially age – are associated with very different patterns of online
participation. Most significantly, young adults are much more likely than their elders to participate in all social
media activities. For instance, Forrester finds that “inactives” make up just 17 percent of those 18 to 21 years of
age, compared to 70 percent of those who are 62 or older. Among people ages 18 to 26, about one-third are
content creators, compared to less than 10 percent of those older than 50 years of age. 2
In general, young adults are the most likely to participate in all forms of online interaction, especially social
networking sites. For media companies that need to engage younger generations to survive, this fact alone
should serve as a powerful motivator to develop online community initiatives.
For newspapers, the starting point is this: Online users simply aren’t spending enough time on newspaper Web
sites. This is a key reason why the growth in online revenues is not making up for declines in print advertising
revenues. In 2007, the average user of a newspaper Web site spent 42.9 minutes a month on the site, according
to Nielsen//NetRatings data distributed through the Newspaper Association of America3. That’s up about 7.5
minutes per month from the comparable period in 2004. But even assuming all that time is spent Monday to
Friday, Nielsen//NetRatings finds that the average user visits the newspaper Web site fewer than two times per
week and spends only about 5 minutes per visit.
To put this in perspective, the average user of a print newspaper spends more than seven hours per month
(425 minutes) with the paper, according to data from Northwestern University’s Readership Institute. That’s
almost 10 times the average time spent with the Web site.
Time and again, interactive services have found that interpersonal conversations drive usage and loyalty much
better than passive consumption of content. As far back as 1983, leaders of Knight Ridder’s Viewtron videotext
service were surprised to see what users found most valuable. “The services that consistently had the most loyal
followers were the electronic mail and CB sections, which, like citizen band radio, made it possible for users to
interact anonymously with each other in real time,” wrote Roger Fidler, one of Viewtron’s key staff members.4
Research on “online experiences” by the Readership Institute in 2005 provided clear evidence of the value of
online community in driving Web site usage.5 The No. 2 driver of Web site usage is the experience Readership
Institute researchers called “Looks out for people like me.” This is an experience users describe with language like
this:
The people who run this site really seem to care about their visitors.
Another important usage-driving experience uncovered by Readership Institute research was labeled
“Connects me with others.” Users describe sites that foster this experience with words like this:
I’m as interested in input from other users as I am in the regular content on this site.
A big reason I like this site is what I get from other users.
I’d like to meet other people who regularly visit this site.
This site does a good job of getting its visitors to contribute or provide feedback.
Newspaper Web sites that have worked to create online communities can see that they do increase usage.
The Racine (Wisc.) Journal Times found that by allowing users to make comments on news, the number of
online users who visit the site regularly (once a week or more) more than doubled, and monthly page views
more than tripled.6
At washingtonpost.com, data show clearly users who participate in online conversations use the site more
than those who simply read the news, said editor Jim Brady.
“We might get 250,000 views for a big national political story, and just 80,000 views for a discussion with
(columnist) Carolyn Hax,” Brady said. “But the discussion is more valuable because the people who generated
those will generate a lot more pageviews over the course of a month.”
Users now expect to interact with news organizations, journalists and each other, said Adam Weinroth, director
of product marketing for Pluck, a vendor of online community technology for news sites. “If you look at how
the media landscape has changed, it all points in the direction of becoming not only two-way, but multi-way,”
Weinroth said.
The culture of newspapers in the late 20th century revolved around gathering and delivering a once-a-
day news package to consumers. Modern newspapers have overemphasized “journalism as fact” rather than
“journalism as forum,” according to journalism historian David Paul Nord. Most papers had letters-to-the-editor
pages, but most letters were not printed and even those that were printed were often heavily edited.
Nord’s fascinating history “Communities of Journalism”7 argues that in the past, U.S. newspapers served as a
hub of community conversations as well. Nord’s book, which covers the 17th to the early 20th century, is full of
examples of ways in which newspapers provided a place for people to communicate with one another and build
a sense of community cohesion. In 1793, for instance, the Federal Gazette newspaper played a critical role in
enabling Philadelphians to communicate with one another during a yellow fever epidemic. The city government
used the Gazette to communicate public-health information, doctors used it to discuss remedies, and average
citizens shared their own personal experiences.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous 19th century book, “Democracy in America,” was struck by the importance
of newspapers’ role in enabling Americans to communicate with one another, Nord wrote in his book, which was
published in 2001. “If Tocqueville could visit the United States today, he would be impressed by our newspapers,
pleased by our electronic bulletin boards, but perhaps surprised and disappointed by the separation of the two.”
“The separation between information and participation – between the professional mass media and the
new interpersonal, interactive media – is wide and growing. Tocqueville would have expected the reverse,
that the vastly improved communications technologies of the twentieth century would have made audience
participation in the mass media more common rather than less.”
Newspapers need to close the gap “between participation and news,” Nord wrote. “Insofar as newspapers
have abandoned the role of public forum in favor of merely reporting the news, they have abdicated their
fundamental democratic purpose.”
During the second half of the 20th century, most newspapers came to dominate their local markets. While
papers in one-newspaper towns had large circulations and strong economic performance, local residents often
didn’t feel connected to them. “One of the great benefits of community is it changes the nature of how people
relate to the brand. I think that’s really important, these days when people seem ever more disconnected from
their local newspaper,” said Dan Pacheco, senior manager of digital products for the Bakersfield Californian.
Bakotopia, a social network site built by the Californian for young adults interested in entertainment in the
Bakersfield area, has an entirely different relationship with its users than newspapers do, Pacheco said.
“They call themselves Bakotopians,” Pacheco said. “I can’t think of any newspaper brand that does that. They
feel a sense of ownership of it, and it’s their place, and they want it to succeed.”
6. Communities will be built anyway – why not have them benefit your news organization?
Whether or not newspapers create online communities themselves, the history of interactive media shows
clearly that people will form these communities and that there will be online conversations about the news.
These conversations are evident in the “blogosphere” as well as niche sites such as Slashdot and Digg. Better to
seize the online community opportunity than let others benefit, experts say. “If you don’t do it, someone else is
Footnotes
1 Li, Charlene, “Social Technographics: Mapping Participation in Activities Forms the Foundation of a
Social Strategy” (Forrester Research, 2007).
2
Li, “Social Technographics.”
3
http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Newspaper-Websites.aspx (NAA).
4
Fidler, Roger, Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media (Pine Forge Press, 1997).
5
“The User Engagement Study,” http://www.mediamanagementcenter.org/opa/OPA_overview.pdf
(Media Management Center, Northwestern University, 2005).
6
Gordon, Rich, “Audience Building Initiative: Online Community at the Racine Journal Times,” http://
www.growingaudience.com/bestpractices/article0707.html (NAA, 2007).
7
Nord, David Paul, Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001).
Technology: Only after the first three steps can you decide what technologies
to use.
have strong local papers that also cover the community well;
have a “robust commercial district” with many small, locally owned shops; and
have active community organizations, a strong municipal Web site, a “lively political culture” and
interest from competing sites.
© 2008 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.
13
Communities of passion are an effort to build stronger
connections among users with common interests. The Globe
looked for interest areas that:
already attract active, passionate users on Boston.com;
A. Comments on articles
The simplest and fastest way to add community features to a news Web site is to allow users to comment on
articles. Many Web site content management systems include this capability “out of the box.” Even if your CMS
does not have commenting capabilities included, vendors such as Topix.com and Haloscan.com can provide this
service. Topix and Haloscan even host the comments on their servers, so enabling comments can be as simple as
adding a small amount of HTML to article templates. Or, you can have a developer add commenting technology
to your CMS.
Newspaper sites have found article commenting attracts new users and increases the frequency and length
of site visits. One powerful example: USA Today’s “Springfield Challenge” invited readers to vote and discuss
the different cities named Springfield that were competing to host the premiere of The Simpsons Movie. This
discussion attracted more than 21,000 comments.
Even so, online newspaper managers have learned the hard way that it can be quite difficult to keep
comments on topic, to screen out profanity, racism and personal attacks, and to defend against automated
spam software that fills up comment threads with links to sexually oriented and other objectionable sites. Papers
as small as the Ventura County Star and as large as The Washington Post have had to turn off commenting
temporarily to improve technology or beef up staffing to manage comments more effectively.
Two key lessons from newspapers’ experience:
Lesson 1: The more anonymous
Lesson 1: The more anonymous the users, the more likely there will be the users, the more likely there
objectionable comments. will be objectionable comments
If any online user can comment without registering, there will be
Lesson 2: It’s hard to build a
nothing to deter the small fraction of online users who seem to take genuine community spirit with
pleasure in posting inflammatory material. article comments alone.
Scott Anderson, director of shared content for Tribune Interactive,
oversees the Tribune Co.’s partnership with Topix to provide article commenting on the company’s newspaper
sites. Topix’s system does not require user registration, and the company believes a registration requirement
would limit the company’s growth and success. “If you have some kind of system to prevent people from posting,
they don’t post,” Tolles said.
But Anderson said there have been episodes of “horrible, hateful” comments. One comment thread related
to a short article about a fire at an abandoned warehouse started off with speculation about whether lightning
was responsible. “By the fifth post, it was ‘Jewish lightning’ and by the sixth post it had turned into anti-Semitic
tirades,” Anderson said. The newspaper staff deleted the post, but not before it had been seen by other users.
Even so, Anderson said, article commenting is an essential feature for a contemporary news site. “The
conversation may not be pretty conversation, but it’s the community talking,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot of bad
stuff happening, but over time we will learn how to do a better job of managing it.”
Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, acknowledges that the lack of registration opens the door to objectionable
comments. However, he said his company’s tools for managing content – including spam and profanity filtering
and the ability to block posts based on IP addresses – can make the problem manageable. More importantly,
he said, the open system also makes it easy for people to post relevant information without hassles. After the
California wildfires last year, one early commenter wrote, “Burn, California, burn!” Tolles recalled. “But the third
comment was a first-person report: ‘My roof is on fire, let me describe exactly what’s going on.’”
“The shock troops of a community site are people who have strong opinions and say things that other people
groan about,” Tolles said. “They are the primordial ooze from which more stuff develops that is interesting. … The
really interesting thing is getting first-person accounts of stuff, and that only happens when you have volume.
The larger the conversation, the more interesting stuff there is.”
© 2008 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.
15
Topix.com, which is majority owned by Tribune Co., Gannett Co. and McClatchy Co., has been quite successful
building an audience by aggregating links to news articles based on topic and geography (community name
and zip code), and by enabling user comments on those articles. It’s one of the top 20 news sites in the United
States, according to comScore, and most of the traffic and comments are unrelated to newspapers’ use of Topix
for commenting technology, Tolles said.
Lesson 2: It’s hard to build a genuine community spirit with article comments alone.
News articles tend to attract plentiful comments, but they don’t tend to spawn real conversations among
users. In part, this is because news articles have a short “shelf life” – they tend to be timely and people lose
interest in them quickly. Another factor is that most article (and blog) commenting systems are not “threaded”
– if the post you want to respond to is days or weeks old, your new comment will be separated from the original
one. Also, some newspaper sites move articles to a paid archive after a week or two, cutting off the opportunity
for comment threads to continue. Beyond that, comments are scattered all over the site, making it difficult for
users to get to know one another and forge interpersonal connections.
“It’s very hard to build community from story comments,” said Baer, editor of Fredericksburg.com, which offers
article commenting as well as the FredTalk discussion board. “If you’re looking to build community, a discussion
board is probably the best thing for you.”
B. Discussion boards
Discussion boards, or forums, have been a staple of online interaction since the days of consumer online
services such as AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy in the 1980s and 1990s. They quickly became plentiful on the
World Wide Web as well. Typically, discussion boards are organized into categories and subcategories, with
threaded posts (comments can be attached to any other comment, not just to the first one).
While discussion boards as a standalone feature are an old technology in Internet terms, they have evolved
into a new form as part of “groups” on social-network sites. Whatever technology is used, forums thrive when
users with shared interests decide to visit regularly, and when some of those users become active posters. A
critical mass of regular visitors and frequent posters is essential – people come to these forums mostly to hear
what other people with similar interests think.
A discussion board can revolve around:
A geographic area. Examples include the FredTalk forum operated by the Fredericksburg
Free Lance-Star in Virginia, and forums on Boston.com that center around towns and neighbor-
hoods.
A demographic group. An example is IndyMoms, the Indianapolis Star’s site and monthly magazine
for mothers.
A columnist or personality. The Washington Post has set up discussion boards revolving around
columnists such as Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne, and around reporters and editors,
including Sally Squires, a health editor.
Discussion boards can be extraordinarily vibrant and active. FredTalk, operated by a newspaper with a
circulation of about 50,000, has 19,000 registered users. At any given time, dozens of people are typically using
the site. Among the most popular topics are politics, football, health, television and recipes.
“I think there are a lot of people who identify with FredTalk as a brand, separate from Fredericksburg.com or
the Free Lance-Star newspaper,” Baer said. “It’s a great place for community connections.”
At least three children have been born to parents who met each other on FredTalk. It’s a place where people
arrange get-togethers for coffee, exchange CDs, plan Halloween parties and seek advice, Baer said.
C. Blogs
In the past few years, most newspapers have added blogs as a key feature of their Web sites. Frequently,
though, these blogs are nothing more than online columns. For a blog to become part of an online community,
one of two things must happen:
The blogger needs to encourage participation by audience members by posing questions, post-
ing surveys or soliciting content such as photos or silly captions.
The blog needs to link to, and be linked from, other blogs. This enables conversations to happen
across sites.
Two newspaper bloggers whose blogs have become true online communities are Eric Zorn (Change of
Subject) of the Chicago Tribune and D.F. Oliveria (Huckleberries Online) of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane,
Wash. Both continue to write columns for their newspapers and use their blogs as a platform for interaction with
readers and Web site visitors.
What drives usage on the site is connections with people you already know. By contrast, older
kinds of online communities tend to build new relationships among people who were previously
strangers (and might never be able to meet because they live far apart).
The huge popularity of MySpace and Facebook might suggest that newspapers should build social networks
themselves, but it is important to note that both sites’ success is attributable to an important factor that goes
beyond their technological features: namely, the age of their core users. Both sites first took hold among young
people – teenagers in the case of MySpace, college students in the case of Facebook. For both demographic
groups, relationships with friends are central to individual identity.
When budget pressures are forcing newspapers to cut newsroom and other positions, it is tempting to hope
that online communities will thrive without requiring much attention from the staff. Online community experts
say, unfortunately, that’s not the case.
At a minimum, someone must be ready to respond promptly
to user complaints about objectionable content. At small sites,
this may be sufficient – the volume of participation may be low
enough, and community cohesion strong enough, that the job EXPERT TIP
of responding to complaints can be given to one person on
a part-time basis or even be shared by several staff members. At a minimum, someone
When the Racine Journal Times rolled out article commenting,
for instance, the technology was set up so complaints of
must be ready to
objectionable content were sent by email to 10 newsroom staff
members, any of whom had the power to delete a comment.
respond promptly to
Most days, only a few complaints were registered.
But as sites grow larger and more complex, the task of
user complaints about
managing community can become a full-time job for one
or more people. Two years ago, washingtonpost.com had to
objectionable content.
shut down comments on one blog because profanity and
personal attacks got out of hand on the site. “That was the
At small sites, this may
early days – we didn’t have the right tools, the profanity filter
wasn’t working properly, and no one was keeping an eye on
be sufficient... But as sites
comments,” said Jim Brady, editor of washingtonpost.com.
Since then, the paper has enhanced its technology (it uses
grow larger and more
technology from Pluck) and has added two full-time positions
for people whose main responsibility is to manage comments.
complex, the task of
Now the site gets 6,000 to 8,000 comments a day, and about
200 complaints of objectionable content, Brady said.
managing community can
“The amount of abuse reports has gone down, and we’re
generally happy with the situation,” Brady said. “It’s easier now.
become a full-time job for
It doesn’t mean we don’t have problems.”
Beyond responding to complaints, attention from staff one or more people.
members can help build a sense of community cohesion on the
site. In Bakersfield, Jason Sperber is assigned full-time as community content coordinator for Bakersfield.com, the
newspaper’s main news site.
“He’s always in that community, and the biggest lesson is that having someone who is ever-present and who
sets a good example is really key to guiding the direction your community is going to take,” Pacheco said. “He
primarily leads with a spotlight, complimenting people, but occasionally, when someone is out of turn, the core
community members will notify Jason.”
After identifying a target audience, developing a strategy and setting up the technology, the task of building
community begins. The first obvious challenge is to make people aware that the online community tools exist
and – if you’re launching a new site – get them to visit. But beyond that, the key to success is to motivate people
to participate actively, not just visit and “lurk.”
Ze Frank, a designer, humorist and consultant who has built a community around his blog-based site, talks
about the “zero to one problem” – what it takes to turn someone from an observer into a content creator.
Jakob Nielsen, a researcher and consultant who focuses on Web site usability, said that participants in online
communities typically can be categorized according to a “90-9-1 rule”12.
90 percent read or observe, but don’t contribute;
1 percent participate a lot and account for the majority of the content.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having 90 percent of your audience be silent observers – as long as the
remaining 10 percent provide them with enough interesting and relevant content to keep them coming back.
This section of the report describes lessons from the experts on how to motivate participation. Not all of these
recommendations will apply to all kinds of sites.
1. Make it easy to participate – but know that making it too easy will mean more work in monitoring and policing
user contributions
For maximum participation, the best approach would be the one used by Topix: allow anyone to post without
registering. But the evidence suggests that the lack of a registration requirement will make it too easy for people
to post objectionable content. At newspaper sites, the most common policy is “light registration” – requiring as
little as a consistent “handle” or nickname and a valid email address. (Typically an email is sent to that address
2. Communicate your policies and expectations prominently, and invite users to help build your community
All sites that require registration, and many that don’t, publish a “terms of service” agreement in which users
agree (whether or not they’ve read it) not to post objectionable content or engage in other antisocial behavior.
But sites can do more than that to establish norms of behavior.
Many sites publish their policies and expectations prominently anywhere a user can post content. The Ventura
County Star, for instance, posts an abbreviated user agreement adjacent to comments that explicitly lays out the
rules and expectations, reminding users “not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive,
threatening or an invasion of privacy.”
Bluffton Today has built a strong community in part, Yelvington said, because the site created a prominent
mission statement and explicitly invited users to be part of the community.
“With your help, we will provide a friendly, safe, easy to use place on the Web for everyone in Bluffton to post
news items, create a unified community calendar, and share photos, recipes, opinions,” the policy says, in part.
“In return, we ask that you meet this character challenge: be a good citizen and exhibit community leadership
qualities. It’s a simple and golden rule. Act as you would like your neighbors to act.”
The phrase “with your help”, which Yelvington took from a model policy drafted by online managers who
participated in a Poynter Institute program, was an important “note of humility,” Yelvington said.
“Having prominent language about what you’re trying to accomplish and asking them to join you in that
mission, and exhibit leadership, really works,” Yelvington said. “Humility and respect in all directions was really the
key to this.”
First, the obvious: There will be unpleasant content, and allowing a free-for-all may draw many comments
initially, but it will deter many people from participating, perhaps even visiting later.
“You might have this view that people reading your stories are educated and savvy when, in reality, there is a
percentage of your audience who will leave messages that will make you cringe,” said McCarthy of Newsday. “It’s
been relatively clean here, but that said, when it’s bad, it’s really bad.”
Objectionable content is especially prevalent when a particular topic brings together people who don’t have
a sense of affiliation with the site and other users, experts say. In general, allowing commenting on news articles
will surface more unpleasant behavior than creating a site for people with common interests. In Bakersfield, for
instance, the newspaper uses the same technology platform for Bakotopia (the site focused on young adults and
entertainment) and for Bakersfield.com (the main news site). Problematic content from users is rare on Bakotopia
and much more prevalent on Bakersfield.com.
“With a news brand, there is this core group of people who just want to talk about issues – liberal vs.
conservative, black vs. white – and identify all the ways they are different,” Pacheco said. “What people associate
with that brand is very different than what they associate with some of the new brands like Bakotopia, which
started as pure community brands. News and issue discussions seem to take over. People who want to talk about
girls’ soccer, the things they have in common, they tend to get drowned out. … It’s because the news brand
tends to be about controversy, I think.”
But even sites where people bond and share common interests can generate antagonism and name-calling, in
part because people can come to know one another well enough to decide they don’t like some of their fellow
participants.
“With FredTalk, things get very personal,” Baer said. “In some cases, members of that community really hate
each other. It’s hard to get to that level of hate as intensely and quickly with story comments.”
One option is to have all user comments approved by staff before public posting. That was the approach
announced in November by The New York Times when it began allowing comments on selected news articles.
The paper hired four part-time staff members to screen user comments. “A pure free-for-all doesn’t, in my
opinion, equal good,” Times Digital CEO Martin Nisenholtz was quoted as saying in Public Editor Clarke Hoyt’s
November column. “It can equal bad.”
But few papers have adopted the Times’ approach – in part because it is so expensive to administer, and in
part because this kind of prior review can deter participation. People who have something to say will engage
more deeply with a site if they can see their postings appear immediately, experts say. So most sites let text
contributions go live immediately (it’s more common to pre-screen photo submissions) and deal with problems
as they arise.
“Most of our customers say, ‘I’m not going to throw an army of staff at microscopically managing every single
unit of content that comes through the system. At the same time I want to have a level of control that makes it
manageable and that creates a good experience for the users,’” said Weinroth of Pluck.
From the experts, here are some strategies – some human, some technological – for dealing with troublesome
users and objectionable content.
‘Dirty word’ filters. Most online-community software can screen out or alert staff to posts contain-
ing profanity or other words you don’t want to see on your site. Look for tools that enable you
to build your own dictionary of objectionable terms. But this is not a foolproof solution – people
are endlessly creative in coming up with new spellings to evade these filters. At Advance, Mercer
recently found that the automated filter was blocking posts about “Dick Cheney.”
Spam filters. Some software can alert staff to potential spam posts by analyzing the content of
messages or, as with Topix tools, cross-referencing with a database of known spam sites.
Filters based on user ratings. Software allowing users to rate other users’ postings can be used
to affect the display of that content. At Slashdot, an extraordinarily popular technology-oriented
discussion site, every user can set a threshold for content ratings – anything below that threshold
will simply not be visible.
Technology that leverages human nature. For instance, Pluck’s community management tools
can be configured to motivate positive participation by letting people earn the right to post
without prior staff approval. If a site desires, the first posts from new users won’t go live until
they’re reviewed, but after some number of approved postings, a user can have his or her com-
ments go live automatically. Another approach, said Jeff Herr of Lee Enterprises, is to “silently
squelch” certain participants. Once a participant is designated a known troublemaker, “that
person keeps posting and they see their comments but no one else does. … They’re no longer
getting the responses that used to give them such a kick. Nobody’s responding and pretty soon
it’s not so much fun any more.”
3. Actively “patrol” areas where there is a lot of activity or topics that are known to be sensitive
Community managers can minimize problems by watching out for flurries of posts on a particular article or
topic (online community software can even highlight these areas automatically). With experience, they can also
recognize topics that are particularly likely to stimulate emotional or objectionable contributions.
“In stories that involve race, crime or sex, those are the discussions that tend to trend rather badly, especially if
they involve all three,” said Mercer of Advance.
Other known “hot-button” topics include immigration, religion, sexual orientation, public corruption and high
school sports.
Accidents
Deaths
The policy also encourages “close moderation” for stories involving sexual orientation” and public corruption.
It’s important to realize, though, that shutting off comments can limit the success of a community. At the
Racine Journal Times, a murder case involving a shooter and victims of different races was one of the key
drivers of growth in the paper’s online community.15
“I’d rather let people talk about things and handle it through moderation rather than shutting down a board,”
said Brady of washingtonpost.com.
Footnotes
8 Gordon, Rich, “IndyMoms Draws Busy Parents with Discussion, Niche Content” (http://www.
growingaudience.com/bestpractices/indymoms907.html).
9
Gordon, “Audience Building Initiative: Online Community at the Racine Journal Times”
10
Gordon, “Spotted at Morris Communications (http://www.growingaudience.com/bestpractices/
audience_report.html#spotted).
11
boyd, danah m. and Ellison, Nicole B., “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”
(http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html).
12
Nielsen, Jakob, “Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute” (http://www.useit.
com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html).
13
Shirky, Clay, “A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy,” (http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html).
14
For more on ‘captcha’ technology, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha and http://www.
captcha.net/
15
See http://www.growingaudience.com/bestpractices/article0707.html
16
See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disemvowel; http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/
archives/001551.html#8725
17
Doctorow, Cory “How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community,” Information
Week, May 2007 (http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199600005).
Allow ad sales staff to specialize when possible. At the Indianapolis Star, there
are three dedicated online sales representatives (who sell ads on IndyStar.com,
IndyMoms.com and the paper’s pets site, IndyPaws.com), and two sales repre-
sentatives who primarily sell ads in the IndyMoms print magazine, Gombach
said.
Work hard to keep the conversations on track. The key to attracting advertisers
is relevant, high-quality user contributions, said Weinroth of Pluck. “If you can
implement these kinds of tools in a way that people are encouraged to stay
on topic and stay on quality, that’s not a turnoff, that’s when it ends up adding
value, and adding other things such as pageviews and repeat visits,” Weinroth
said. “Brands and marketers are just as eager [as publishers] to tap into the
power of social media and reach audiences in hard-to-reach places.”
Newspaper sites are also experimenting with creative ways of generating revenue beyond
the banner-ad model.
At Morris, the card that Spotted photographers hand out at events is blank on the back, a
space that can be sold as a sponsorship or as a redeemable coupon, Coyle said. The company
is also selling sponsored “before and after” photo galleries. Customers can include landscaping
contractors, remodelers, cosmetic surgeons and orthodontists.
Leaders of newspaper sites also believe that they can leverage online social networks to
benefit advertisers.
Different people have different appetites for interaction. To get maximum par-
ticipation, a site should offer a range of options – from simple activities such as
rating content to more challenging ones such as writing a blog or contributing to a wiki.
Successful online community initiatives require a plan. The plan starts with
identifying a target audience and understanding its needs for online commu-
nity capabilities. Only then should specific technologies be considered.
Social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook have built huge audiences,
but their lessons for newspaper sites may be modest. They are attracting large
audiences and considerably more loyalty than newspaper Web sites, but this appears
largely to be due to their core audiences of teenagers (MySpace) and college students
(Facebook), who are at a point in their lives when relationships with friends are central to
individual identity.
While online conversations can get unpleasant, they can also be successfully
moderated and kept on track. Choosing the right technology model, requir-
ing some degree of registration and devoting staff resources to online communities are
among the key steps to success.
CommunityPro, LLC
(2008 Marketing Conference booth #502)
13101 Washington Blvd., Suite 458, Los Angeles, CA 90066
Phone: (310) 566-7151
Web site: www.community-pro.com
Contact: Steve Dienna, President and CEO, Steve.Dienna@Community-Pro.com
CommunityPro - Connecting Your Newspaper with Local High School Sports Teams.
CommunityPro offers free online tools and high quality Web sites for prep sports teams
provided by and co-branded with the newspaper. This exclusive program effectively drives
new revenue from local content and enhances newspapers’ relationships within the local
community. With CommunityPro, editors augment timely local content while maintaining
editorial control. Publishers gain new ad products and inventory to offer advertisers.
Dell Sports
(2008 Marketing Conference booth # 415)
2303 Distribution St., Charlotte, NC 28203
Phone: (704) 332-5562
Web site: www.dellsports.com
Contact: Terry Dell, President, terry@dellsports.com
Dell Sports provides highly interactive online sports games, content, and social networking
for media partners around the United States. Our latest product “Prep Sports Nation” is a
localized High School Sports social Web site with a robust stats engine to enter, track, and
produce stats reports for every High School sport. Complete with video/picture sharing,
school/team pages, user profiles, and blogs, Prep Sports Nation is a full solution with reverse
publishing on all user content.
McClatchy Interactive
1100 Situs Court, Raleigh, NC 27606
Phone: (919) 861-1213
Web site: www.mcclatchyinteractive.com
McClatchy Interactive provides digital publishing solutions that support The McClatchy Company, the third-
largest newspaper company in the US, and numerous external newspaper customers by generating revenue and
workflow efficiencies that grow their business. Hosted services include the Workbench content management
system and InSite, our turn-key online registration tool. McClatchy Interactive owns and operates the Real Cities
Network, the largest national network of local news Web sites, with over 1,800 affiliates in more than 110 U.S.
markets.
Morris DigitalWorks
(2008 Marketing Conference booth #701)
725 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901
Phone: (706) 828-4337 or (866) 495-5097
Web site: www.morrisdigitalworks.com
Contact: Karen Taylor, Director of Business Development, karen.taylor@morris.com
Morris DigitalWorks (MDW) is an innovative multimedia development company providing tools, technologies,
Web development services and prepress solutions to Morris Communications newspapers and external clients.
Our advanced Internet publishing tools, such as mdClassifieds™, mdRealEstate™,
mdTransit® and SPOTTED®, have been field-tested by Morris newspapers, and have proven effective in
producing enhanced Web content and generating substantial revenues. Additionally, MDW’s impressive suite of
BluMunKee® prepress software automates the process of correcting photos for print and Web publishing.
NewsGator Technologies
(2008 Marketing Conference booth #814)
950 17th St., Suite 2500, Denver, CO 80202
Phone: (303) 552-3900 or (800) 608-4597
Web site: www.newsgatorwidgets.com
Contact: Craig Lachman, Sales, Syndication Services, craigl@newsgator.com
NewsGator’s Widget Framework and RSS platform enable newspapers to create Web 2.0 deployments that
enhance content, add collaboration, and extend their brands and ads to users’ portals, homepages and social
networks. Powering a range of sites from USA TODAY, Discovery and CBS to National Geographic, community
papers, and financial and retail sites, NewsGator delivers profitable Web 2.0 functionality to the desktop, Web,
and wireless. Our services launch rapidly, drive page views and increase advertising revenues.
Serra Media
(2008 Marketing Conference booth #717)
1616 Summit Ave., N202, Seattle, WA 98122
Phone: (206) 349-3902
Web site: www.serramedia.com
Contact: Glenn Thomas, Founder, glenn@serramedia.com
Serra Media provides next generation technology for local news publishers to use on their Web sites that
help build interactive online communities which drive significant increases in audience and revenue for the
news organizations. It is a new company, based in Seattle, which was founded by veterans of the local news
publishing, rich media advertising and large-scale corporate software industries.
Topix LLC
(2008 Marketing Conference booth #702)
1001 Elwell Court, Palo Alto, CA 94303
Phone: (650) 461-8327
Web site: www.topix.com
Contact: Stephen Burns, Marketing Manager, burns@topix.com
Topix is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that
matter to them in every U.S. town and city. A Top 20 online news destination (comScore November 2007), the
site links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 user-generated forums. Topix also works with media companies to
engage their online audiences through syndicated forums, hyper-local platforms, news feeds, and more. Topix is
privately held with investment from Gannett, McClatchy, and Tribune.
VMIX
(2008 Marketing Conference booth #911)
12707 High Bluff Drive, Suite 350, San Diego, CA 92131
Phone: (858) 792-8649 ext. 117
Web site: www.vmix.com/company
Contact: Jennifer Juckett, Vice President Marketing, Business Development, jennifer@vmix.com
VMIX is the leading provider of software and services enabling online publishers to deliver video, rich media,
social networking, user-generated content and interactive community tools to their online audiences. The
VMIX.CORE software platform provides a turnkey solution for media management of videos, audio, photos and
slideshows, with social networking and community features. VMIX is a dedicated innovator and the trusted
partner for companies such as Tribune Interactive, Media General, and Lee Enterprises.