yelvington.com

If interactivity is one of the four keys to a successful news website, don't we need community management skills? Recently the Online News Association published a study by Max Magee that "attempts to define which skills and intangible characteristics are most important in online newsrooms." More precisely, the study reflects the current assumptions and working experiences of online news managers and producers -- where we are today, not necessarily where we should be.

The study reflects the receding importance of technical expertise -- HTML and Photoshop are still important, of course, but skills generally common to copy editors (multitasking, attention to detail, headline writing, etc.), rose to the top of the list and more geeky skills such as PHP and CSS sank to the bottom. Among people working as producers at newspaper websites, "cultivating online communities" ranked 18th out of 35 skills, with only 52 percent saying it's something they do daily. Among producers at news websites not affiliated with legacy media, that same skill ranks 13th, with 70.7 percent saying it's part of the daily routine.

I've noticed several postings recently on the various journalism job boards reflecting an apparent higher profile for online community leadership. Titles vary. The Army Times is looking for a "Community Conversation Editor," a title that I like, but the "editor" word is a bit imperial.

We're currently calling a similar job "community content coordinator," in which I stumble a bit over the word "content." Maybe "community interaction coordinator" would be better. Noodling on a job description I came up with these components:

• Solicit contributions from the community through the website and other channels.
• Serve as a "Spotter," photographing people at community events and handing out promotional cards.
• Recruit, train and organize volunteer/intern "Spotters."
• Plan Spotter coverage, maintaining a calendar of events to be covered.
• Make presentations to community groups about the newspaper and website.
• Serve as lead "host" for the local blogspace, starting and participating in conversations.
• Recruit, train and organize community "expert" bloggers.
• Moderate and manage online conversations as necessary.
• Work proactively with reporters to help them engage in community interaction.
• Work proactively to identify Web content for print production, in close collaboration with the Editor.
• Support end users as they engage with the website.

Enough to keep anybody busy, and hardly a copy editor role. But what have I left out?

Continuing my riff on the four keys to a great news website:

I stumbled across a great quote from the late Douglas Adams, who noted that we think everything invented before we were born is normal, everything invented before we were 30 is exciting, and everything invented after that is an offense against the natural order of things.

"This subjective view plays odd tricks on us, of course. For instance, 'interactivity' is one of those neologisms that Mr [John] Humphrys [BBC news presenter] likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport -- the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn't need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don't (yet) need a special word for people with only one head."

I admit I never thought of "interactive" as a neologism, but that explains why there's been so much confusion. For years it's galled me to see "interactive" glued onto the names of organizations utterly opposed to interactivity, as in "Daily Bugle Interactive." Newspaper associations hand out awards in "interactive" categories to websites that glue flashy bling-bling onto old-media, linear, one-way news lectures.

Americans, who pretty much owned the 20th century, are particularly affected by this temporal myopia.

Several years ago my wife and I traveled through Ireland, staying at farmhouses and country homes, eating lamb stew at country inns, and staying up late at little Irish pubs.

We have Irish pubs in America where fake Irish bands set up on low stages, turn on amplifiers, and play for us. In Ireland what I witnessed was entirely different. People wandered into the bar carrying instruments, took over a centrally located table, and just began playing, apparently for free beer. More arrived, some dropped out and circulated. It was hard to tell where band left off and audience began, as the audience might be playing along with silverware and glasses, and singing. It was participatory music.

William Gibson says the future is already here; it's just unevenly distributed. So also the past is still here, and unevenly distributed. If we just look around us we can see that the "normal" human condition just might be a bit different than we assume.

I don't know why "interactivity" is so confusing. "Inter" and "active" are pretty straightforward. "Inter" is about connection. "Active" is about doing. What do people do on your website? Does it have to do with connecting with other people?

The social isolation and disconnection that is the legacy of 20th century mass media is one of the poisons that is behind the steady decline of newspaper readership since 1970. Robert Putnam has documented this decline and has some ideas about how to counter it.

I think one thing newspapers can do is to embrace this concept of interaction. We need to become convenors of community, facilitators of civic conversation, builders of social capital. This is about the actions we take in our geographical communities, not about the technology we deploy on our websites.

It's in our social interests and in our strategic interests. The good news is that it also works in the short term: people love it, respond to it, join in it. Participative components significantly increase the frequency numbers (visits per user per month) of a news website.

Kevin Anderson hits the nail squarely:

"Blogging isn't a publishing strategy; it is a community strategy. ... But I see the same mistake being replicated with blogging. Newspaper publishers and broadcasters often fall into the trap of trying to understand new media behaviour through old media paradigms. Podcasting becomes another distribution channel, and blogging becomes another publishing platform. Adding comments to the bottom of stories or columns is a step, but it's missing the point."

The Web is not just another edition.

About a decade ago I came up with this simple prescription, four key targets for any media site:

• Timely. This is not just about being first with the news. It's about having what I want, when I want it. It's about being in tune with my time. Dayparting, which was misunderstood by every newspaper site that tried it, is a tool for addressing this point.
• Useful. This is about taking real, concrete action in the real world. Help me. Give me search engines and databases and answer machines that are quick and easy. Improve my life.
• Interactive. This is about people, interacting with one another, not just "feedback" and certainly not about blinky flashy junk. Human beings are tribal by nature. We want connections. Today we call this Social Networking. But it's not new and it's not tech.
• Entertaining. I want to enjoy the experience. I want voice, attitude, humor. I do not want to be "entertained" by having to shoot down your popup ads with ctrl-W.

Back in the last century when I was at startribune.com the staff would chant along: Timely. Useful. Interactive. Entertaining. I nagged and I nagged about it. What are you telling your folks?