While it isn’t really full-fledged blogging or "citizen journalism", it is a step in the right direction.  The Winston-Salem Journal announced yesterday that they are allowing comments on "certain hand picked stories."

Here’s some of the announcement:

The point of this is
to encourage participation in the news. So if there is a particular
story, somebody’s column or a topic you would like to have comments
available for all the time, email us at webstaff@journalnow.com and let us know. We’re new to this "two-way news" thing too.

As part of the announcement they also highlighted a story that has comments enabled.  In my excitement I decided I had to post a comment. Here’s the text I found in the comment posting window:

Comments will be posted only with the name you enter, but please give us an email address so we may contact you.

Publishing comments is at the sole discretion of this Web site and subject to our Terms and Conditions of Use Agreement.
By posting to this forum, you assume responsibility for your
communications and the consequences of posting them. Comments must not
be obscene, profane, sexually explicit, libelous, slanderous,
defamatory, harmful, threatening, illegal or knowingly false, and must
otherwise adhere to the requirements of the Terms and Conditions of Use Agreement.

Comments should focus on issues raised in the article.  Try to keep comments to 50 words or less.

All
comments are reviewed before posting. Therefore, there will be a delay
period between submission and display of accepted items on the Web
site.
      

Very interesting.  I think they’ve been watching what’s been going on at the Greensboro News & Record, because they have gotten out front with a policy on comments (what’s acceptable, we can refuse to allow comments we consider nasty, etc.) and they are allowing anonymous posts which is an issue that the N & R wrestled with publicly.

While I’m not sure about the 50-word limitation, it will help limit some ranting.  Still I think maybe 150 words would be a little more appropriate.  They do have one neat little tool in their comment window:  they limit you to 500 characters so they put a counter in the window showing you how many characters you have left.  Very helpful!

I’m also not sure about the "reviewed before posting."  I have a feeling it’s a CYA thing, but I’d rather see the comments post instantly and then have them removed if they are inappropriate.  Why?  Because I think it makes the process transparent and preempts the people who will automatically cry liberal (or conservative) bias on the part of the editors if their comments aren’t posted.

All in all I’m pleased as punch to see this.  Now how about getting Carl Crothers (Executive Editor), Jim Laughrun (Managing Editor) (oops, he’s retired), Ken Otterbourg (Asst. Managing Editor) and/or Charlie Elkins (Asst. Managing Editor) blogging like their N&R counterpart John Robinson?