I agree that the comments make the digital newspaper more interactive. I persoanlly prefer the physicla paper edition and here is why : http://tinyurl.com/yww3qv

I like the idea of TV stations offering comments under programs. I dont know of any that show the comments live. I do watch an Indian NEws Channel NDTV that shows readers emails in the bootom of the screen periodically.

Shashi

Clark Hoyt — the Public Editor for the NY Times posted a bit of a history and his thoughts on allowing comments (and moderating them) last month in a piece called “Civil Discourse, Meet the Internet:” http://tinyurl.com/2zmlvv

That spawned a moderate thread on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/ypeefo

My sense is that there will be more and more of this sort of functionality, and journalists will adapt in many ways — posting stories faster (the print editions evolving, possibly, to being only a subset of the content posted by staff journalists over the prior 24 hours) and by following the comments (as story sources, as well as ways to extend the stories by summarizing comments in a follow-on piece).

If anything, it sort of makes sense that smaller papers are adopting new media faster than the giants in the space: it’s a way to make a relatively small investment (I have visions of “the publisher’s/editor’s teenage kids working on it) and generate both more content and a larger reader base. The challenge remains as to how to make that a workable business model, as paid subscriptions to online content do not seem to work. And local papers tend to rely more heavily on local businesses for advertising revenue, right? Now, as those local businesses move to the web and start having an online presence where they can sell their products to a much broader audience (for some reason, The Mad Whittler in Rangeley, Maine, comes to mind: http://tinyurl.com/ytlv83), this could all work out (and sites like http://www.fark.com are building up a sustainable presence to mine the most interesting stories from small, regional news outlets).