Remember how I posted awhile back on the subject of how online provides a nice forum for public officials to speak to the public? When I wrote that, I was thinking about our new Saturday online page, as a place where Mayor Bob and others could have frequent missives appear without being limited by the one-column-to-a-customer policy we have in the paper, since in-paper space is at such a premium?
Well, Mayor Bob seems to like the idea. In fact, after I told him late last week that I would feature his latest offering on Saturday, and urged him to submit material for that venue in the future, two things happened:
- He has sent us yet another piece.
- He’s asked me what the length limit is for online.
Feeling for all the world like Victor Frankenstein throwing the switch, I answered:
"There is none."
Alive, alive, IT IS ALIVE!
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Have you considered a weekend package entitled “No Limits” or something like that?
I’m thinking of (stealing from?) a combination of the WaPo Saturday print edition “Free for All” the features a whole page of reader letters on the page just before the editorial page, and its Sunday “Outlook” section back page that features four or five longer opinion pieces on local matters.
Conceptually it’s a moderated forum — your and your staff select (cull) the input — and Mayor Bob may have a regular column, as might other folks. It’s a combo of community columnists / elected officials / bidness leaders / wing-nut activists and whatever. But you decide what get’s posted, or, a la trusted bloggers, who gets to post. It’s your site, after all.
Each column / entry could have a link to another related site, a sister site or page, for comments for that column / entry where readers can have their say, perhaps in the structure of a listserve’s dendritic comment tree. That would kept the main page less cluttered yet let folks register their comments for a particular item.
That comment site might be structured such that it reproduces The State”s content or has links to it, but can stand alone. I’m thinking of a site labeled something like “the hoi polloi” where this happens, and it can readily be accessed on its own sot that common can bookmark it and go directly to it. Your advertisers may find the “No Limits” and comments beneficial
I think that such and arrangement would further benefit your blog too
Mayor Bob speaks… but nobody listens.
Actually, Mike, I had been thinking about having some regular columnists on the site. For instance, Mayor Bob (since he writes so often) could have a regular spot, and so could others, such as the governor perhaps. The idea would be to provide elected officials to have relatively unfiltered access to give their version of events to the voters, who would have all that much more fodder for holding them accountable.
The one limitation remaining is our own ability to process the stuff and get it up on the site. Right now, publishing anything on the new Saturday site is an unbelievably time-consuming process — for me, at least. For instance, I got away from here Friday at about 10 p.m. — which means I barely got home in time to set up my laptop and check to make sure the blasted site had actually posted as of midnight…
(All of which, I should say, make me really enjoy all the readers griping and moaning about me providing them with this service, which is a lot harder than giving them Saturday pages, just less expensive.)
That’s why there’s a limited even to “unlimited.” If Mayor Bob sends me a 5,000-word piece, I’m not gonna post it because I won’t even have time to read it, much less tangle with it to post it…
And no, I’m not posting anything I haven’t read…
… or at least, that SOMEBODY hasn’t read…