On Tuesday of this week (December 18, 2007) NPR's new morning show The Bryant Park Project did a segment on the local perception of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, and his large and ardent Internet posse came up.  Like many others Bennett Roth of the Houston Chronicle guesses that Ron Paul supporters "are a little bit younger, a little bit more male, and certainly very disaffected."

Instead of letting the story end there, the show's on-line editor Laura Conaway decided to ask, "Who Are Ron Paul's Supporters?"  Unsurprisingly, Paul activists have flocked to the post to leave comments — 3,189 as of this posting.  However, not all of the supporters claim (hopefully, they're honest) to fit the stereotype that many of us think of this ardent group.

One is a "47 year[s] old, male, married, two children and a computer programmer. Never involved in politics until someone introduced [him] to Rep. Ron Paul's message."

Another is a "Fifty-something single female, employed in the arts."

Another respondent is a "54-year-old divorced woman… [and] very concerned about the decline of the dollar and inflation."

While another person is a "29 year old woman and married" who is works as a "self-employed Independent Sales Trainer, writer and stay-at-home mom."

One commenter states, "I'm an NPR listener and one of the 'secular progressives' so feared by the Fox news crowd."

Granted, many of the respondents are in their 20s or 30s, male, and work in a technical field, but not all.  Hopefully, The Bryant Park Project will interview of some the respondents who don't fit the stereotypical Ron Paul supporter to ask them why they support him.

When I showed this to my friend Kevin Anderson, who is the Blogs Editor for The Guardian in the UK, he was impressed by the response to this simple blog post since he could see how it can add to the greater Ron Paul story.

"I have often said to our journalists that only a fraction of our audience will respond to [a] traditional article, and often those responses won't add much to the story," Kevin e-mailed me today, "However, by guiding the discussion with a simple question or some framing of the debate or issue, I think participation not only increases but it's also broader and more diverse."

His remarks confirmed what I was thinking.  Not only do simple questions help participation on blogs, but they can have significant impact on the journalistic value of blogging.

Update: Due to the "Paul-valanche" of comments, The Bryant Park Project has turned off comments on the post. 

I became aware of the term tumblelog around a year ago and have been running across examples of tumblelogs with greater and greater frequency lately. According to Wikipedia, a tumblelog “is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.” This site has a list of examples.

After circling around the concept for awhile, I set up a test tumblelog for myself using the Tumblr service. Here are my impressions of tumblelogging generally and Tumblr specifically:

Things I Like

(1) The interface is dead simple and slick. As you’ll see from the screenshot below, all you do is click on the content type you want to post and your off.

(more…)

I read today that an editor for the blog LAist, Tony Pierce, accepted a position running about 25 blogs over at the LA Times. I thought it was interesting to see such a huge paper, with such a mixed record in the online world, making a blogger an important part of the paper's team.  There's some pretty extensive coverage about this on Friday's edition of LAist, but I thought I'd pull out a couple interesting points from an interview with Tony Pierce.

Zach: Day one, what would you like to start doing?
Tony: On day one I would like to throw out a bunch of ideas to my new boss and find out which ones she likes and which ones she thinks are lame. And then I would like to do the cool ones that we agree on. But I'm not insane, the Times is an old, established, successful organization. Things don't change as quickly as you guys probably think. LAist was a different beast. One Monday last year Jake said he wanted Food every day. Two weeks later we had food every day. I'm pretty sure a huge organization like the LAT works a tad slower.

Andy: You've been successful as the lead editor of a group blog — LAist. How will you motivate / approach the Times people to absorb your inspiration and ideas and go with it, considering the general resistance to change within age-old publications?
Tony : That is the big question. Can someone from outside of journalism inspire real pros? And can the MSM break through in the blogosphere. Currently there's not one newspaper blog in the Technorati Top 100, which is a challenge that I'm more than happy to take on.

Andy: Are there any news sites that particularly impress you as far as their approach to blogging and attracting UGC?
Tony: The Houston Chronicle has led the way for newspaper blogging and user generated content. And I really like the NYT's City Desk blog - City Room. But the entire industry has only just started to really wake up because they had resisted the whole thing for so long. Rightfully. And now that they know that digital is the way to go, it's right for them to get it together. But as that Elvis record sorta said: 100 million blogs can't be wrong.

Andy: Will you be restricted by any Times policy from what you can write about (aside from the obvious)?
Tony: Probably. I'm joining a huge corporation. Something that I am used to. I've worked for huge places before. And even being editor of LAist I toned down what topics I wrote about on my personal blog, so i have no problems with that. Since 8/11/01 when I started blogging, I've written about 7,500 posts. I've had plenty of time to rock the mic. Now I'd like to help others reach the blogosphere, because it's a great audience.

Andy: Do you have any plans to create blogs of general — not just localized — interest? For example, NYT has things like an Open Code blog, WSJ has All Things D ….
Tony: The one thing that blew my mind while I met with the Times is that they really are open to many many ideas. One of the things that we were very successful at on LAist were expanding our coverage to things outside of LA. That pissed off some readers but sometimes you just have to shrug and say **** the haters. So yes I hope the Times continues to think outside the box and continues to trust new perspectives, because now they are on a huge playing field - the web - that has a lot of wide and varied competitors who aren't restricted to certain boundaries or rules or pasts to live up to. So to compete with them you really have to play a slightly different game to a point. But the Times has had no problems going outside of LA for a lot of their best stories They are a leader in International news, therefore they should continue to learn from that success in regards to blogging about things outside of LA. Believe it or not I think that will be easier to do at the Times than at LAist.

Andy: What about hyperlocal?
Tony: Likewise they can do hyperlocal better than even the LAist because they have a full time staff of people who are used to covering the metro beat and they know who to talk to, how to get there, and how to get it written in a professional manner. At LAist I couldn't get anyone to go to that lameass Hollywood Santa parade even though a few of us live a few blocks away. So there are pluses and minuses to an all volunteer blog staff, and that night was definitely a minus.

I'll be interested to see how Tony's transition to MSM goes.  What kind of effect will he have on the LA Times?  And conversely, what kind of effect with the LA Times and MSM have on Tony Pierce?

Last week the New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt announced that the Times had begun allowing user comments on select editorials and news stories appearing on the website (via CyberJournalist). The Times has long allowed commenting on its blogs, but this marks the first time it will allow visitors to comment on stories that actually make it into the print version of the newspaper. All comments will be moderated by Times’ staffers. Hoyt writes about that decision: “The paper is creating a comment desk, starting with the hiring of four part-time staffers, to screen all reader submissions before posting them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business environment.” You can view an example of how comments on the Times site will work here.

In reading Hoyt, it is clear that this is a decision the Times came to very reluctantly. On the one hand, the Times acknowledges the contribution that commenters can make to a site:

“We have two great assets,” said Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor who is in charge of the newsroom’s online efforts. “One is the quality of the material we produce; the other is the quality of our readers, some of the most curious, intelligent and sophisticated people on earth.” Putting the knowledge of readers together with the journalism of The Times, he said, could result in “news and information of greater power, reach and quality than even a great newsroom can produce on its own.”

On the other hand, Hoyt provides multiple examples of commenters on the Times’ website run amok and closes with this:

Many major newspapers, like The Washington Post and USA Today, do not have an editor screen comments before posting them. Those two papers allow other readers to object to a comment as abusive, and then an editor will check it.

But Landman said The Times never considered unmoderated comments.

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, said: “A pure free-for-all doesn’t, in my opinion, equal good. It can equal bad.”

I believe that’s especially true if you’re The New York Times and you are trying to maintain a rare tradition of civility. A site with many Rays in Mexican Colony of LA might carry the name of The New York Times, but it would no longer be The New York Times.

I think the solution of allowing comments on select articles is a good one. I also think the decision to allow only pre-screened isn’t going to work for the 99% of newspapers that simply don’t have the resources to devote four full time people to screening comments, as the Times does. The solution simply isn’t scaleable.

If I were running a newspaper website, I would not pre-screen comments. But I would take the following steps to help ensure the conversation maintains a minimum level of quality:

1. Only allow users who have registered with a site to post comments.
2. Screen the first comment a user makes. If the first comment is acceptable then let the user post without screening. If it is objectionable or off topic, then don’t allow the user to comment. This will help prevent the trolls seeking to sidetrack conversations from getting through.
3. Automatically delete all comments that contain profanity.
4. Create a mechanism that allows users to report comments that are objectionable. If a comment is flagged by enough users, it would then be sent into a moderation queue for review by an editor.
5. Give users the ability to hide the comments of users they find objectionable.
6. Provide active oversight of the community. Have editors leave comments themselves. Ban users who are out of line. Delete objectionable comments. You’ll find communities tend to be more civil when administrators maintain an active presence on their site instead of being distant figures.

What do you think is the best way for high volume sites to handle comments?

Update: Thought of one more: (7) Close comments on articles after one week of discussion.  This will free you from having to manage comments on old stories and focus on the new stuff.

The conservative blog community RedState recently issued a ban on Ron Paul supporters from “shilling” for their candidate on the site. This led to a very entertaining exchange of arguments about the decision. Against the ban, you’ve got Captain Ed and David All. Defending the decision you’ve got Mike Turk, Lance Dutson and Erick Erickson from Redstate. And then David All and Mike Turk weighed in again.

Seriously. Go read this stuff. Very entertaining.

My take on this is that RedState did the right thing. But I have a different perspective on the matter than most that have commented so far. By banning Ron Paul “shills,” RedState was simply preserving what makes it a great site - it’s community.

I’m an old dude in Internet years. I’ve done my time on various message boards, blogs and community websites. And I’ve seen some of my favorite sites ruined by poor moderation by site runners.

I’ve watched sports boards that I loved devoted to the Texas Longhorns and the San Antonio Spurs go to crap due to poor moderation that allows personal attacks and off topic discussions.

I’ve seen the conversation level on fantastic liberal and conservative blogs devolve to the point of horror due to submissive admins.

I’ve watched how crappy the discussion is on newspaper websites like the Washington Post and USA Today due to lack of oversight.

I’ve watched Ron Paul supporters make any real political discussion on Digg impossible. I’ve seen these same folks hijack threads on this very site.

I can only imagine what a site like RedState is dealing with during an election year.

As an admin at one of these sites you have a responsibility to your community to preserve the level of discourse by providing oversight. If you don’t, you run the risk of alienating the core contributors that made your community site great to begin with. RedState did the right thing.

Back on Oct. 3rd through the 5th Alex and I attended the Institue for Public Relations’ 5th annual Summit on Measurement in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Overall the event was fantastic. I spend all day working on ImpactWatch, the media measurement platform created by The Bivings Group, so it was great to meet with a group of 100+ media measurement, media research, and social network gurus.

The session I was most interested in attending was “How to Measure the Impact of Blogs and Other Consumer-Generated Media.” This was a panel discussion including Shel Israel , Kami Huyse , Todd Parsons, Donald McLagan from Compete Inc, and moderated by KD Paine . Unfortunately I set my expectations too high. Not that the session was bad, it just wasn’t what I expected. I think Shel summed it up best when he said that we haven’t been doing this long enough to have best practices “We’re just at the ‘good ideas’ stage.” As such, it seemed like the discussion took a turn towards the merits of doing social media measurement at all. Todd and Donald (and I) think there is absolutely value in it, that’s why we provide products and services doing exactly that. Some thought that it was a waste of time. It was also suggested that the whole point of social media is the conversations it creates which are hard to measure at all. I agree that it’s ideal to have blogs and social networks facilitate conversations and generate engagement, and it is something that is hard to measure. I don’t think that’s what it’s all about. This was confirmed when the audience was asked to raise their hands if they had a personal or corporate blog. Almost everybody raised their hands. When asked if they comment on other blogs, the hands dropped to about a third of the audience.

Most readers are still going to blogs to learn more about subjects they are interested in. They aren’t necessarily interested in joining the conversation. Therefore, many traditional web metrics still apply.

In conclusion, it was certainly valuable to learn that blog measurement is something everybody is still trying to get a handle on right now. In fact, the direction we’re headed with ImpactWatch looks pretty advanced compared to what other folks are doing.

Despite its somewhat odd name, The State Department's new blog site, DipNote , is a pretty interesting example of new ways to use blogs.

The site features several State Department officials blogging about their work, their travels, and current issues in international affairs. The content is certainly interesting, but that isn't what really caught my eye about this site.

What I found incredibly surprising was that the blog actually allows comments. And they don't appear to be censored.  After a quick scan of the comments on several blog posts, I realized that both positive comments and comments critical of the State Department or US Government are freely flowing.  Here's an example–a comment that appeared on a post about Burma.

Roy in Oregon writes:
"Thou hypocrite, cast first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote that is in thy brother's eye." Luke 6:42

Let me see — You are a political appointee in the most secretive administration in U.S. history… How is that helping "create a free flow of information crucial to democratic development?"

— You are the member of an administration which quite improperly and illegally harvested telephone information without appropriate judicial warrants…. That doesn't discourage "free flow of information?"

— Your President authorized pressuring Internet Service Providers to release information about legal (but private) citizen use of the internet… Who can trust this administration to protect the principles of "freedom of expression?"

Brother, how about first removing the beam (and the blinders) from your own eye and working to end the murderous cabal which employs you? Posted on Mon Oct 08, 2007

Pretty bold.  And the comments are loaded with others very similar to this one.  It seems like DipNote is actually a legitimate forum for discussion rather than just a false front.  In an era where so many media outlets, organizations, and political campaigns are concerned about "inappropriate citizen content" appearing on their websites, I am finding the openness of DipNote pretty refreshing.  I have to say, I'm even impressed.  Why is it that so many newspapers remain unwilling to open their sites to various types of user commentary, but the US government appears willing to reduce barriers to two-way communication?

DipNote is a great example of a blog that is leveraging user comments to generate traffic and discussion. I would venture to say that if the site lacked freely flowing and less-than-complimentary comments, the site would be much less popular than it is now.  Perhaps this can serve as a model for newspapers still serving up "flogs" (fake blogs) and websites without interactivity. 

Anyone that regularly reads tech blogs knows that the news aggregator Techmeme is the topic of tons of discussion. I think the attraction definitely has something to do with the fact that Techmeme simply does a pretty good job of summarizing the day’s tech news.

But I think the other thing at play here is that Techmeme is a bit of an exclusive club. The site only tracks certain blogs that have attained some influence in the blogosphere. The dynamic this creates is that if you are a site that Techmeme tracks, you tend to read Techmeme. Sure, you find value in the content, but you also want to see if your posts are making it to the main page. It is sort of addictive.

Today, some folks have written what I’ve been thinking for awhile: Techmeme simply doesn’t drive much traffic to sites that appear on the front page.

Bobbie Johnson from the Guardian’s Technology blog writes:

But in taking a swipe at the diminishing influence of the biggest sites on the leaderboard, Winer also inadvertently points out something else that is crucial: for all that Valley-centric news junkies claim Techmeme as a crucial aggregator, it simply doesn’t refer much traffic. The Guardian features on Techmeme’s leaderboard - at position #57 as I write this. But for us, it represents a tiny proportion of referral traffic.

I’m not going to disclose numbers - the stats dominatrix here at Guardian Dungeons would have me eating gruel for years if I did - but suffice it to say that Techmeme doesn’t rank in the top 100 referrers to the Guardian’s technology pages.

Nick Carr chimes in with some actual numbers:

Even so, I have to admit that the Guardian’s Bobbie Johnson is absolutely right when he says, “for all that Valley-centric news junkies claim Techmeme as a crucial aggregator, it simply doesn’t refer much traffic.” It’s true. I’ve had quite a few headlines sit fairly prominently on Techmeme for many hours, and at most they’ll push a few hundred visitors to the story on my site. That’s squat. On those rare occasions when one of my posts claws its way up the list at Digg, Stumbleupon, or Reddit, many thousands of visits result. Even some recent headlines modestly positioned on the Y Combinator news feed have generated more traffic than a prominent Techmeme headline will.

Our experience at The Bivings Report jibes with that of Carr. We’ve gotten a couple of hundred visitors from prominent links on Techmeme. If we are secondary link on the site, we get well under 100 referrers. This is small time compared to what links on many other sites get in terms of referrers.

I think Techmeme is definitely a small, insular world. However, as Scoble wrote, it is a small, insular world that wields a disproportionate amount of influence. Important people read Techmeme. If you are on Digg, you may get a ton of traffic but the impact is short lived. Those people aren’t going to start reading your blog or participate in your blog’s community. They aren’t going to link to you. It is much easier to turn Techmeme visitors into readers of your blog than the Digg folks. You are also much more likely to get links if you are on Techmeme because (1) I suspect most people that read Techmeme have blogs themselves and (2) linking to each other is the whole point of Techmeme.

In the end, I think Techmeme is like one of those rock bands that musicians and critics love but the general public has no clue exists. Its influence far outweighs the size of its fan base.

I noticed a new addition to the great library of resources on washingtonpost.com this afternoon.  It seems they've added a local blog directory.  It includes some useful features, like searching according to neighborhood, keyword, and tag.  They also display the most recently updated blogs, and offer a new feature for people to tag their Flickr photos "wpblog" to get their photos listed.  

I signed TBR up for this, and while the process was pretty painless, there were a few minor glitches.  First, you have to be a member of wapo.com to get your blog listed–I have absolutely no problem with this.  But, the sign-in area on the blog directory needs to be a bit more clear. It asks for your username and password, when WashingtonPost.com actually just uses email addresses as usernames.  That was a bit confusing.  I also ran into a couple of broken links in the process.  Overall, however, I think it's a pretty easy to use system.

In our newspaper study, we mention "complementing print online" quite a bit. The Washington Post has done this well, and has developed its crossover audience–number of people that use both print and online editions–by offering interesting online features.  We've talked about the site's databases before, and the local blog directory is just one more feature that will attract more visitors online.  Well done!

Overnight, FoxBusiness.com launched to preview Rupert Murdoch's long awaited answer to CNBC — the Fox Business Network, which launches in two weeks.  The site is in promo phase and looks nice. 

It claims to have blogs for each featured on-air personality, but I'm not sure if that is the case.  I don't see any place for site visitors to comment, link to an individual post, or subscribe to RSS feeds. 

Granted, I don't want to claim the right to define blogs as a feature that require easy access to individual post links, commenting, and RSS feeds, but those seem very common features. Further, I understand that while the site is in its promo stage, and the site may not want to enable these features yet.  Most blog CMS products enable users to control these features at the post level. 

However, right now the "blogs" are just a place for the on-air talent to introduce themselves in their own voices.  Site visitors, on the other hand, cannot easily provide feedback, link to, or subscribe to them.  Hopefully, the blogs will get these features soon.

What do think are the standard features of a blog?  Do features define this term or not?  

Our post a few weeks back about when to use Drupal and Wordpress generated a pretty good discussion in the comments and on other websites. Below are the best questions/comments and our responses.

(1) Amnon - Drupal Israel: “Did you notice any performance difference between the systems?”

Considering the functionality both of them possess and what both the platforms are trying to accomplish, we have found Wordpress is more resource intensive then Drupal. By default, Wordpress makes a ton of database queries and has no built-in caching. Drupal has caching out of the box. Poorly optimized Wordpress sites have actually become a sort of running joke on Digg, where Wordpress site after site that appears on the Digg homepage goes down within a few minutes due to overwhelmed database servers. However, those with a bit of experience can run Wordpress efficiently by using the WP-Cache plug-in and by optimizing your hosting set up. In addition, the brand new Wordpress 2.3 release supposedly includes some serious speed improvements. We are testing the new release now.

In addition, when implementing both Wordpress and Drupal you should be conservative in the plug-ins you use, as they can cause performance problems. This has been less of an issue for us in Drupal, mostly because Drupal has most of the functionality we need out of the box and we haven’t had to install a ton of plug-ins. (more…)

I started to write about the top 5 sports blogs, however I feel I wouldn’t do that post justice. The fact is, I grew up in San Antonio, TX, which, in terms of pro-sports, has the Spurs as the only game in town. So for this weeks Friday’s Five I bring you the Top 5 Pro Basketball Blogs using the only metric that makes sense, my opinion.

The Best

TrueHoop

Henry Abbott has a background as a journalist and the quality posts on TrueHoop show it. Anybody who loves the NBA and thinks little is happening during the off-season should start reading this blog. The original reason I started reading was very simple, I was tired of getting the same stories about the same things over and over again in the mainstream media. TrueHoop was an island in the storm providing great insight from true basketball fans both in the posts and the reader comments.

When Henry is on vacation or assignment, the backup bloggers, led by Kelly Dwyer , continue the great posts. Recently Dwyer has been doing a series called KD’s DVDs where he goes back into his archive of game film and gives his comments on the games of yesteryear, reminding readers of the epic games that made them become basketball fans in the first place. And all this greatness exists despite the fact that TrueHoop has become part of the ESPN Empire .

The Rest

Basketbawful

This is a basketball blog with an “it’s funny ‘cause it’s true” brand of humor. With posts about the trials and tribulations of what to wear and how to survive pickup basketball, and words of the day like “Circus Shot,” it’s easy for a longtime hoops fan to relate. Add in some old school highlights and commercial clips and you’ve got pure gold.

Basketball Jones

This is a great basketball blog with an even greater basketball podcast. In fact thebasketballjones.net podcast is currently ranked number four in the category of Best Podcast on the Blogger’s Choice Awards.

Agent Zero: The Blog File

More and more players are starting to blog their thoughts about basically everything. Gilbert Arenas blogs about his workouts, his games, players, video games, his home life, shoes, and whatever else pops into his head. Arenas is a funny guy and the NBA, who hosts the site, lets him be himself. Anyone in the public eye wanting to start his or her own blog should take a lesson in transparency from Agent Zero.

SB Nation

Team blogs. It stands to reason that a lot of the basketball blogs out there are fans writing about the team that they love. As a Spurs fan, all of the Spurs fan blogs would tie for a place on this list. But there are a lot of other great team blogs out there and several of them are part of the SB Nation blog network. The “recent posts” section combines all of the member site headlines, and if you want to stray, the network also includes baseball, football, college, and the catchall “other” category.

Get ready for the NBA blogs to explode in the coming weeks. Opening night is Tuesday October 30th 2007 .

In my article last week on Wordpress vs Drupal, I gave some examples of sites built using those tools. Frankly, most of the examples I gave were sites we’d worked on. I figured I’d loop back and give examples of some exceptional sites I’ve come across (and didn’t work on) using each toolset. The goal is to show just how far you can push things using Drupal and Wordpress.

Drupal

(1) New York Observer

A full on newspaper website built using Drupal. (more…)

Yesterday I attended the Modern Media Strategies Workshop at The Heritage Foundation.  There were many panels during the conference about how those in the political sphere can harness new and social media.

While blogging was one of many topics, many people from political organizations and congressional staffers asked the speakers about how one can find prominent blogs.  Panelists suggested Google Blog Search and Technorati, among other blog search engines, as places to get a general idea about different blogs.

I would like to add two other resources: e-newsletters and blog aggregators. 

Some newsletters track blogosphere chatter about a specific topic, and following this coverage is an excellent way to determine which blogs are influential.  The Exoro Group's Utah Policy Daily is a great example from my old stomping grounds.

Blog aggregators cull posts from a set of blogs focused on the same topic.  Thus, you can use these sites to easily track many blogs at once to determine which are the most prominent.  Staying close to my previous example, UtahPolitics.org is an example of a site that captures political blog chatter in the state. 

These are just two types of helpful resources.  What do you use to find important sites?

The left-leaning news and opinion site The Huffington Post announced a new commenting policy to its community last Thursday.  It'll promote top commenters to regular Huffington Post bloggers. 

Community members will help determine who gets this honor by using the site's new "I'm A Fan Of" and "Favorite" links for comment and user profile pages. Paul Berry explains, "Our decision will be based on how many fans a commenter has, how often their comment is selected as a Favorite, and our moderators' preferences."

I think that this is a great idea since community driven sites need to find ways to award their members, and this is an interesting strategy.  First, commenters who earn this promotion will have to prove that they'll particiate on the site in an intelligent way.  Second, it'll encourage commenters to do their best to contribute in a constructive fashion so that they'll even have a chance to win a blogger spot on the site.  Third, promoting the best commenters is a great way to retain and encourage active participation on the site.