News sites are tapping their readerships to create a community online. But as you will see, the interests in the online community don't always coincide with the newspaper editors' daily choices of the news.

The Arizona Republic / Arizona Central has people talking about everything, says online editor Judy Nichols. When a police officer was shot, people posted condolences to the family. And when reporters were looking for service stations with inexpensive gas for a story, the forums came to the rescue.

CNN recently opened a forum for Yugoslavian people to comment on the war. According to Chuck Westbrook, managing editor of CNN Interactive, it served as man-on-the-street interviews.

The crossword puzzle forum is one of the most popular at The New York Times, says Laura Noueihed, senior producer at New York Times on the Web.

What's that? A crossword forum at a news organization known for its in-depth coverage and analysis?

Don't be surprised, says Yahoo! producer Mark Hull. "Just because it doesn't fit in your news model, it doesn't mean it doesn't fit in your community model."

Hull should know. He builds tools to help people communicate with one another through the portal site,Yahoo!

Connecting people online is a way to add a community to your website, he says. But when it comes to storytelling vs. communities, the news web developer has to weigh what is important for his or her user, Hull says. Emphasis on the user's needs.

What Can Interactive Communities Do?

• Builds affinity with your site.
• Builds loyalty and repeat visits.
• Can impact users more profoundly.
• Keeps the news organization in tune with people. Put a reporter in the forum with people and it really opens the eyes of the reporter.

"Interaction is the basis of our existence," Hull says. "It's what the users want. People want to interact with one another."

The old-school philosophy of interactivity used to mean message boards, chat, links to e-mail, reporters' biographies, and polls.

That notion, Hull says, has evolved to include online town halls or community forums, off-line interaction, death announcements, allowing people build their own websites, and using online content as content in the newspaper.

At Yahoo! They give people a suite of tools to do the thing they want: clubs, calendar, address book, and photo uploading.

"If they have everything they need to publish, they won't have a need to go elsewhere," Hull says.

At The Daytona Beach News-Journal, people are charged to post birth photographs, says Chris Bridges. Hull suggests, however, that the "value added" part should be in providing the photographer or the writer to help the people craft their announcements. Don't sell the posting services, he advises.

The new school of interactivity, says Hull involves community publishing and reporting.

"Let people do whatever they want, give them the tools, and move out of the way," Hull says. If you don't have a community in place, create a small one and grow from there.

Some topics around which communities grow:

• Sports
• Local news
• Breaking news
• PTA / Soccer
• Companionship
• Financial services
• Entertainment

Suggestions & Insights

Interactivity is not Shockwave or Flash. It is more about creating online communities where people are interacting with people they never otherwise would have interacted with.

By allowing people to not only react to reviews, but to also write reviews, you are giving them a reason to go to you instead of to specialty movie sites.

There is a risk to interactivity: lawsuits. Current wisdom says if you monitor forums and chat rooms, you may be liable for the information within them.

Yahoo! is experimenting with ways to verify users’ ages and identities in some of its community areas. Recent legislation allows companies to use credit cards to verify ages and names, according to Hull.

Make forums event related. Take it down after a couple of months. If a forum is not being used, take it down.

Try, learn, and try again.