Paper keeps readers involved via online poll

This week, the Pasadena Star-News Web site is asking online readers to cast their votes for the kind of poker column they would like to see in the publication’s print edition. Voters are asked to choose from a column featuring inside tips for experienced players, one that functions as a tutorial for beginners or no column at all.

Editor Larry Wilson wrote in an e-mail that the "unscientific reader response" generated from the poll would be read with interest but that the result of the poll won't make or break the column in the woodwork. While the Pasadena Star-News wasn’t latching onto any trend Wilson was aware of -- like the paper's Web site influencing print content -- the Star-News would use such promotional polls again for “fun featury columns” in the future, he wrote.

It “serves to tease the reader to the notion of a poker column at all -- to watch out for that coming attraction,” Wilson added.

“And poker, mysteriously to me at least, has become this hip, hot media thing, with all these celebs joining old Amarillo Slim piling up the chips in Vegas. Poker on TV? Getting people to watch that, these people are certainly smarter than me. So just mentioning the idea of a possible poker column on the web site for the Star-News somehow makes the paper, print and online, look a little cooler," he said.