Call me optimistic, but I think literacy and education lead to reduced conflict and greater prosperity, and I think access to cheap computer power is the key to education around the world. Paper is too expensive — and too slow. Information is power, and information is available free all over the Internet.
It’s slightly off-topic, but [...]

Jack Lail, managing editor/multimedia at The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, wrote a comprehensive post about allowing online comments on newspaper Web sites. It’s an excellent treatment of the topic and well worth reading for both journalists and journalism students.
Commenting and comment management systems will evolve for newspaper Web sites. We’re at 1.0 versions for managing large-scale [...]

Many people have commented on the actions of Mayhill Fowler, who went to a fund-raising dinner for Barack Obama and later wrote about remarks Obama made there. (Today Jeff Jarvis commented on Michael Tomasky commenting about Jay Rosen commenting on the matter.) Much of the fuss revolves around questions about who is a journalist, when [...]

Clay Shirky has a new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. It’s about technologies of social networking.
I don’t know if this is in the book; Shirky wrote it for a blog from his publisher, Penguin:
A good deal of user-generated content isn’t actually “content” at all, at least not in the sense [...]

The question: Should we allow comments on our (news stories / columns / reporters’ blogs / multimedia packages / etc.)?
The answer: Yes.
But … ah, yes, there must be a “but” in this answer. Moderated? No, because no one has enough money to hire enough people to read every comment posted on a news Web site. [...]

There are several interesting comments on my EveryBlock post from yesterday. Feel free to join in.
Some people would like to see the data formatted differently.
Some think it’s more useful for reporters than for citizens, while others say it’s a great tool for citizen journalists, who are more concerned about “hyperlocal” news anyway.

The missing link in the concept of “community” on news organizations’ Web sites: Who are these people? New media consultant Marshall Kirkpatrick says you can add the necessary social glue without trying to look like a cheesy Facebook imitator:
… instead of adding a social network to their site, they should just add rich user profile [...]