News websites social features

I wanted to look at news websites and how they try and work with consumers. Some news organizations have developed larger social networking sites for their consumers while other organisations have no apparent way of getting in touch with their readers.

CNN's iReport is probably the most developed user based news community among the websites I looked at. You sign up, create a profile and from there you can make your own blog, write your own news articles and upload your own video reportage. I didn't read the "Terms of Service" but I'm guessing CNN get to use your news articles without paying for it, which makes it free news for CNN. Just a thought.

BBC's website is good but if you want to contribute it is kind of hard to find information. The only information I found was a number where you could text things to and a site where you could upload a video or a picture. But it was hard to figure out and didn't work that well.

The largest Swedish newspaper DN.se have a simple text note on the top of their homepage with a phone number you can text if you have breaking news (you can also send pictures). My local newspaper back home HD.se has the same feature but they also offer 5000SEK (900USD) for the best user story each month.

The DenverPost was probably the hardest website to try and contribute to. I'm still not sure how to send them anything...

All these sites had a "comments" features which seems to be standard these days.