N.L. interview with Steve Swenson in the blog news - By N.L. Belardes

If you read my lengthy article about Steve Swenson's moderator job over at Bakersfield.com in "Understanding the Bakersfield.com blog realm: An interview with Steve Swenson", then you will be interested in the crosslinks. Swenson himself picked up the article for the Eye of Bakersfield blog. Bakotopia was happy to upload the article, calling it "mischief". And I found the article linked on howardowens.com in a piece titled, "Newspaper moderator talks about his job". I appreciate what Owens had to say:

There are not too many people working at US newspapers doing what Steve Swenson does for Bakersfield.com — moderating citizen participation. He’s been doing it since July 2005 and for part of that time I had a front-row seat to watch him grow into the job in a way that is authentic and vital, applying the right balance between inserting himself into debates and cracking down on bad actors...

If newspaper.coms are going to be successful with citizen content and user participation, they will need more Steve Swensons — many, many more. It’s one of the most important jobs news sites need to fill. In fact, there should have been an army of Swensons in the news business a decade ago.

Good job on getting this interview, Nick. I think it’s cool that you, who has so often been so harsh on TBC, recognize the value of Steve’s job.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Friday, November 10, 2006. You can leave your response.