Michael Lavitt, Senior Content Producer, Aviation Week, introduces a panel of plays for user-generated content that integrates with mainstream content: Laurel Touby, Founder of Mediabistro, a site that covers mainstream and new media; Eric Newman, VP and GM for Pluck, providing tools and content for integrating user-generated media into mainstream portals; Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 and Atlantic Media; and Laurel Toby, Editor of MediaPost, exploring how to integrate user generated content.

Building a Web community: Laurel - many in community were content producers but now they're also in PR and marketing. Brought the community online. Put stuff on site that they have to engage with. The aggregation of all of the news of the day. Asks who has bulletin boards, comments, etc., very few hands, one question, "What's a bulletin board?" Oops. But ever her editors weren't sure about discussions. Started with "party marketing," reached out to community members. Got volunteers. See what you can get for free. Now 200 events, some around the world.

Are we doing the same things with better technology: Laurie - Web 2.0 technologies changed things dramatically, a journalist is not the same beast as a result. Still need fundamental skills such as sourcing and verification, but the job is more about putting things in context and finding educated opinion. Everyone has to learn video, a lot of things she learned at iVillage - how to provoke discussion and debate - is part of the skill set for journalists these days.

What will journalists have to give up in terms of reporting: Laurie - at a classic trade show, did blogging, video, show daily and regular online daily news coverage and special email bursts. Did a dozen video interviews, realized that she didn't talk to a lot of people when she was there, didn't sleep a lot. Trade journalism is changing, wasn't sure that she'd make it here today from having to deal with stuff.

How can trade media experience relate to User-Generated Content. Eric - five years from now every site will have interactivity but not necessarily community. It's about taking metaphors that you're comfortable with and extending them. Editorial has to be part of the discussion, no longer an us-to-them model, results are amazing when it works. Pluck powers TheStreet.com comments, skyrocketed the site visits. "We the Media" book, at a conference posts on a blog got back to the blogger who asked questions that interacted with the event. Journalists help to facilitate the news.

How do you manage the content coming from users, how do we feel safe: Scott - getting people to use embedded features is different from "who wants to set up a blog." When comments get turned on all of a sudden people are all over your article. Two different challenges - floods of content of varying quality, or people are scared and don't contribute. Weblogs are just content management, to ask users to blog is to ask them to create content. Laurie - don't allow anonymous posting, people upload party photos. Scott - now we can have an infinite number of columns.

How do we write for online: Scott - in old days held on to stories, now we have the online medium that's great at breaking stories. Nothing drives traffic like real news. When people want to know things they will come. Eric - Web provides unlimited scale of content than can be delivered. Were some other good topics, but by this point the cream was skimmed off. Bottom line: there's a major disconnect between attendees and user-generated content. Most are just beginning to get good focus on integrating traditional print editorial operations and online operations. It's good background for many of these publishers, but most are at the foothills of user interactivity. A good motivator came up in the spirited Q&A: what's the financial upside for blogs? Laurel quipped that it's cheaper than editorial, and that's the point. An audience can generate usable content more quickly than an editorial team in many instances. Excellent panel.

Labels: ABM, cmswatch, content management, Digital Velocity, ediaBistro, editorial skills, events, media, MediaPost, pluck, user-generated content