Tough day for a great blogger...

One of the big challenges I face everyday is to work to engage our viewers.  In a high tech city like Seattle, San Francisco it's not all that hard.  Nashville's WKRN-TV has been the model for engaging their viewers.  They launched a web site a couple years ago called Nashville is Talking. (NiT)  In it's basic form, the site aggregates local blogs and the site has become the citizen voice of Nashville.

WRKN hired a local blogger Brittney Gilbert to write for NiT.  She reads what's others are writing and features those posts on the main page of NiT.  She's done it for two years, until today.   In a post on NiT this afternoon, she announced she was resigning.  It's sad for a web guy like me who's admired her work for sometime now...

It all began when she linked to a post "Teaching Libs A Lesson".  It wasn't her opinion, it was someone else's. Yea it was a very one sided post that many though was racist.  It sent off a flurry of comments including some very personal attacks. It all became too much for Brittney and led to her decision to leave NiT.

One of the things that really suck about the Internet is that people forget there's another person on the other end (most of the time).  I'm guilty of it as much as the next guy.  In a perfect world, people would be civil in what they say and how they say it.   That's just not the case on the web.

One of my goals at KRISTV.COM is to build an online community where the communities opinions can be expressed.  My biggest fear is that something similar to this event will freak out my bosses and they'll be a knee-jerk reaction to shut it down.  It's very possible that someone could write a post that would offend ... let's say for an example ... members of the Hispanic community.  I can imagine protests at the corner of Staples and Agnes ... and it would only be because in the corner of the web page would be a "KRIS Communications site."

It all going to boil down to people who won't understand how the Internet is evolving.  It's going to be an issue because our "traditional" viewers won't understand how aggregation works.  It's going to be an issue because the viral nature of the web more people will be attracted to the post/issue/controversy.

Really I think it would be a good thing.  It opens dialog and gets people talking about issues that matter to our community.  I want to get to the point of "Corpus Christi's Watercooler".   I think it will happen ... as long as what happened to Brittney doesn't happen here, before it can stand on its own.

Then again ... this is the Internet.  Who the hell really knows what would happen.  It should be fun to watch.

And to Brittney ... I can understand your reasons for leaving, and it WKRN lets you go .... just remember you've made a huge impact on the evolution of Internet and local media's role in it.  Hopefully I'll be a 1/4 as good as you.