By: Matt Von Pinnon,
On Thursday, The Forum’s Web site, inforum.com, quietly rolled out a new feature that could boldly change the face of media in this region.
The new feature on our homepage allows us to showcase the writings, photos, videos and audio of anyone or any group that wants to get their message out to our ever-growing online audience.
Essentially it makes everyone a journalist, or at least gives them the means to reach a large audience like one.
It’s also bound to leverage the expertise and interests of people in our community and allows those experts or interests to reach a much larger audience than they otherwise could.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.
For years, The Forum’s parent company has operated a Web site called Area Voices, found at areavoices.com. More than 1,000 community members now use the site to write and post photos about anything they’d like. Topics include, but are not limited to: sports, entertainment, media, technology, family, farming, politics, religion, heath, business and movies.
What we’re really doing now is giving some of those community content generators a more highly exposed area on our Web site. We think this will do two things: It will showcase some really interesting material from people or groups within our community, and it should connect like-minded folks online.
For instance, a youth hockey team or group could start an online newsletter and, rather than just having those who know about it see it, thousands upon thousands of others might run across it on inforum.com, exposing that group and its news to a much wider audience.
Or, a local green thumb may want to share her secrets for planting a good herb garden. Now, using Area Voices and having her material showcased on The Forum’s Web site, she’s bringing local gardeners into the conversation.
The possibilities for content are only limited by what community members can imagine.
But how can this gardener make sure her content is seen by an interested audience? Well, community content providers can now tag their offerings, just like we at the newspaper do for the material we produce. By tagging content with key words – in this case, maybe “home and garden” – computer robots are able to categorize the content under certain sections. And those content sections, like “home and garden,” now contain an Area Voices tab that allows people to view material community members contribute as well as the material produced by professional journalists.
Essentially, there is Our Voices (journalists) and Area Voices (community journalists).
Of course, turning over part of our Web site to every Tom, Dick and Harry comes with some potential pitfalls.
For that reason, we’ll still control the keys that allow select community voices to be featured on our home page and we’ll still monitor these postings to make sure they meet a community standard.
It won’t be Mayberry all the time. Nothing is when you open up dialogue in a large online community. People have different standards and tastes. But it should be exciting and interesting to see what our community shares online.
We think as more people see the possibilities of being able to publish to a wide audience, the dialogue will only grow, creating a robust community of thoughts and expressions.
Ready to try it? Surely you must have something to offer. Log on to areavoices.com and click on the “sign up today” button in the top left corner of the page. It’s your space. Do with it what you want. Then watch for more information in coming weeks on how to become a featured community content provider. It should be a fun and interesting ride.
Von Pinnon is editor of The Forum. Reach him at (701) 241-5579
Tags: fargo blog, Fargo Forum, fargo media, Fargo News
