The trick with blogging, I’ve decided, is to do it often enough you get in the groove and don’t feel every entry has to be stellar, Shakespearean and for the ages.
Yeah, right.
I’ll be talking a lot here about my favorite Website and the changes and permutations there. Er, here. (You see, our plan is to insert this blog INTO the Website, and to do that for several folks at the station. Me first, of course;-) Thanks to my UPS, despite thunder and lightning, I feel safe ruminating for a few.
We began an article rating and comment system earlier this year, and just changed to one provided (in beta test) by our Website provider, World Now, through its partner, JS-Kit. Already, my wish list is growing (bigger typeface! No gray on white! etc.) but I do like much about it – especially that it’s built-in to our CMS (content management system), not a bolt-on (though my pal Karl Sanford in Palm Desert built a heck of a bolt-on;-)
Anyway, I’m not “pre-moderating” the comments in the new system, like I did before. But I think the ability to vote on others’ comments or mark them as offensive have kept a little bit of the wild and weird and nasty from emerging.
So far.
You see, I’ve likened anonymous article comments to an open-mic night in a place with all the lights out. Some will say worthy things, and others will, in essence, belch into the microphone, abusing the anonymity.
Always been that way.
So the comments I see each day have been interesting, enlightening, entertaining, head-shaking, bizarre, sad, depressing, and frightening in either the “these people don’t live here I hope!” or “Boy, would we get sued posting this” way.
Still, as I told all in the co. I work for, lack of dialogue of this kind makes a Website seem, cold, sterile, one-way and old fashioned. It’s worth putting up with the crazies or near-crazies to hear what people think, feel and say. It’s actually resulted in on-air stories some times. And like this blog, it’s also allowed me/us to clear the air and explain things on occasion.
I’ve also learned that I don’t have to weigh in a lot and, for example, defend the station or myself from non-constructive, harsh, unfair criticism – others do it for me, without me ever asking to. It’s sort of a self-regulating mechanism.
I surely can understand how the corporate world is scared, especially in a legal sense, of such unfettered dialogue. The point I’ve tried to make is that these conversations are happening anyway. Wouldn’t you like for them to happen within earshot, rather than behind your back – so you can be aware and take action, even respond and explain?
And of course, the answer usually is, “Well, yeah, but…” and the buts are all very logical and understandable, but they don’t reflect the reality of what my favorite new media blogger, Jeff Jarvis calls “news as conversation.”
People have too many time pressures, too many options for gathering information the old ways to think we can just take the old styles and put them in this new medium. We are not the gatekeepers of information any more, and it’s naive to think so. We just want to be their favorite hangout, a good source of information and a lively dialogue spot – enlightening and entertaining, and yes, sometimes aggravating.
Such is life…;-)
Leave it to Barney 
