OJR: The Online Journalism Review

October 16, 2007

OJR debuts 'how-to' help on user-generated content for news publishers

  • The wiki-style article is the latest addition to OJR's collection of how-to articles for online news publishers.

    • By Robert Niles
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    Topix

    Financial support for OJR's coverage of social media is provided in part by Topix:
    Topix is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city. Apply to edit your local news today: www.topix.com


    We've added a new article to OJR's collection of how-to guides for online news publishing.

    The article is "How to manage an online community", and it offers some basic advice to beginners looking for tips on soliciting and managing user-generated content. You also can find the article hyperlinked in OJR's navigation rail, on the right side of the page, in the "How-To Guides" section under the link "User-Generated Content."

    As with all OJR how-to articles, this piece is presented in a wiki-style format, allowing OJR's registered users to add to or edit the piece. So OJR's student editors and I will be updating the article from time to time, and we invite you to do so, as well.

    One highlight of the initial version of the article is a collection of links to official support forums for some of the more popular discussion forum and blog publishing tools, including vBulletin, phpBB and Drupal. We've also included links to support forums for easy-to-use Web application development tools, such as php and ColdFusion.

    If you are an independent Web publisher, or a newspaper dot-com employee with a limited budget and no development staff, these links can help you get started with your decision on the right tool with which to build your online discussion community.

    There's also a link to OJR's substantial archive on managing discussion forums.

    User-generated content can provide news publishers with an effective and affordable way to expand coverage while building reader loyalty. But only if those publishers approach UCG with humility and good bit of research. I can't speak to your personal level of humility, but we hope that OJR's new how-to article will help provide you with a good start on the research.

    http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/communities/

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