The document discusses how news organizations can build online communities to engage readers as print subscriptions decline. It recommends providing robust user profiles and contributions, moderating content fairly without strict rules, and using metrics to highlight popular discussions. Building a community can help publications grow their online audience and find new revenue sources in the digital space.

1. Building Online Communities Matthew Haughey

2. Everything is moving online, newspaper subscriptions fall

3. Writers, editors, and organizations need to adapt

5. This doesn’t seem right .

6. Give readers community features and they’ll flock

7. Follow these steps to build a successful community

8. Why community?

9. Newspapers are a fixture in the physical community

10. … but not in the online world

11. Small towns: easy to be the sole source of online info

12. Large towns: name recognition

13. Web communities get traffic

15. More traffic: more readers, and more revenue possibilities

16. Digg, reddit, gothamist, blogs

17. Users expect interactivity online

18. News doesn’t have to be one-way

19. Comfortable with customization

20. Tyranny of choice

21. How to build it?

22. Robust user systems

23. Incorporate into existing logins

24. Don’t do this.

25. Personality in member profiles

26. Welcome contributions

27. Highlight the best

28. Have writers interact as well

29. Elevate members to writers & photographers

30. Embrace the web

31. Hire web-savvy teams

32. No barriers to reading

34. Open the archives, perm. URLs

36. How do you maintain it?

37. Moderation that’s fair

38. Online moderator: full-time job

39. Online moderator: ombudsman?

40. Emotions out of decisions

41. Craft some guidelines

42. Guidelines, not rules

43. Deal with troublemakers quickly

44. Metrics help run a community

45. Flagging spreads the work out

46. Favorites/voting for the good

47. Case Studies

53. What’s stopping your organization from building a community of readers?

54. Everything is moving online, newspaper subscriptions fall

55. Add community features and grow your online audience

56. A collaborative news site can please readers and create revenue

57. Questions? [email_address]