Moderating Online Communities
Is it a potential new job for the desk?
By Gerri Berendzen, National board member | Posted: 1:52 PM 4/11
If you’re interested in life beyond the rim and slot, talk to the people who attended Moderating Online Communities: A Potential New Job for the Desk, presented by Doug Fisher and Travis Henry.
Travis Henry discussed YourHub.com, which he was involved with until recently. One of the things that might cross the minds of those who have worked for super-small community newspapers is that this is just that kind of paper online (and the Denver YourHub actually makes a portion of its money with a print version, Henry said.)
In a 21st century way, it reminds me of the weekly my grandmother got in her town of 50 people — someone from the community wrote up all the gossip, who was at a neighbor’s house for dinner, and which Johnny got a big hit in last week’s Legion game. Then they called it in to the small town publisher.
Now that neighbor is just posting the same sort of stuff directly to a site like YourHub. Take out the community forums and this sort of enterprise looks a lot like turning back a clock.
I’m not knocking it. It’s been popular for decades and is still popular in hundreds of rural areas in the nation. Community journalism will always have a place in the picture, and online hyperlocal sites have been proved to be popular.
What does seem different is the idea of the desk as a moderator of community discourse on the Web. Doug does this on his Hartsville Today site. He calls it being a “troll whisperer,” essentially being the Emily Post of online forums, but in a laid-back, 2008 sort of way.
There were several people in the audience who do this now for a living and understand the ideas of working behind the scenes to keep things civil and letting the online community police itself. It seems like it could be an interesting job, but it doesn’t seem like copy editing as we know it.
In fact, one audience member asked Doug, “but what does this have to do with copy editing.” He gave a fairly direct answer — it’s a job that will be there when your copy editing job is gone. It’s a new world for those used to working with grammar and holes in stories.
Doug’s advice to copy editors is to create “new world” opportunities for themselves. This one won’t be for everyone, but it is one of the opportunities out there.
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