I suggest our local news websites implement comments functionality so viewers can respond to reported stories.
Wired Magazine last month identified ‘People Power/Peer Production’ as one of six big trends now powering the global economy. Big companies harnessing the distributed labor force of visitors include Amazon with peer reviews, News Corp/MySpace with hosted sites, and Yahoo/Flickr with photo sharing.
Anyone can to the numerous comments generated by just dozens of IdahoFallz.com users in response to local stories we publish. People like to express their opinions, and they like to talk about local events. IdahoFallz.com has enabled local people to discuss local issues with others that they normally would never meet. That makes it both more interesting to discuss and knits our community tighter.
The only way locals can currently respond to news stories is writing or calling the station, getting stopped for opinions in parking lots, or discussing those stories amongst themselves in homes and workplaces.
I understand our Post Register has some discussion forums, but you must be an online subscriber to access those. I once again wish aloud the PR would switch to a free online model, so more could access those forums and blogs could link PR stories as references.
Discussion boards are one thing, but I think simple comment functions in response to stories would serve local news websites better. Comments designed in response to individual stories helps keep discussion on topic.
Analyzing our local news websites, I see they could all be redone easily in a free content management software like Drupal or Wordpress. Both of those open source software packages have built-in comment functions that would serve the purpose.
Otherwise, comment functions could be integrated with their current code using open source solutions like PHP (for the code) and MySQL (for the database handling). Say what? Read: small investment = big returns.
(Oops, it appears KIFI Local News 8 failed to properly close a map tag with the closing bracket!)
I know if local news sites do this, IdahoFallz.com will lose some visitors who come just for the discussion features not offered elsewhere. I suggest this to strengthen our local offerings and increase our local technology offerings.
Or perhaps we could arrange feeds from local news websites to have their stories published on IdahoFallz.com, where comment functions are already built in? That may be too collaborative for some station manager’s comfort, though.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention Digg.com, the Web 2.0/social networking news site uses comments extensively. Comments on Digg are seen by users as half of Digg’s usefullness. In fact, Digg has paid so much attention to how users appreciate comments that they made several comment system enhancements.
These include threaded comments (so you can comment on a comment in the middle and have yours indented, which helps identify specific sub-conversations), and digging comments themselves (meaning lame comments get thumbs-downs and buried and intelligent comments float to the top).
Digg.com is seen as the force that will revolutionize news, and comments are half of their strategy. I bring this up as a real-world example of why our local news websites need to examine their strategies and integrate comments into their stories.
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
yesterday me and my cuz bobby were under the table whith cheeseits and bug rats. WE LIKE DRIFTING. Arent you felling jelly to. Dreams are for me to eat and helpe i am gone
Ummm….i think it’s time to put the bong down and come out from under the table before you hurt yourself.
Scary stuff right there.
What’s really sad is comment #1 looks exactly like the type of writing and grammar we see in a lot of high school kids…..high or not!