UGC, PDQ

A lot of news organizations talk big, at least internally, about user-generated content (UGC), but very few are doing anything really interesting with it. A lot of this is a result of editorial fear: "What if those horrible audience people write offensively? Don't tell the truth? Use bad words?" Oh, the horrors. Sheesh. Get over it.

So newspaper Web sites dip their toes into UGC, very reluctantly, with maybe a heavily edited user blog or two, or a photo contest (yawn), or cautious comments, or—and people, no matter how you want to define it, this is NOT UGC—a daily poll.

What they should be doing, of course, is giving the audience a full voice in the coverage and discussion of hyperlocal issues, building active audience communities around beat reporters and columnists, and tapping into existing bloggers for supplemental content.

Or, they can try something simple, and fun. To that end, I bring you Instant Daily, an extremely popular feature in the University of Connecticut's newspaper, the Daily Campus. The paper asks readers to send it (via AOL Instant Message) short anonymous thoughts and observations. Submissions are culled and edited, and then posted—unsigned—a few at a time in the paper and on its Web site.

The result is a fascinating, readable, entertaining combination of graffiti and haiku, a snapshot of life on campus, with one- or two-sentence comments like:
• "To the kid who walked out of the dining hall with the wrong backpack: Was it a blue Northface from South Dining Hall? I want my backpack back!"
• "The words 'I love Lisa' are written on a bathroom stall in the women's bathroom in the library. Either this Lisa thinks very highly of herself, or some guy was really, really lost."
• "I don't understand what's so fun about kite flying."
• "At what time is it OK to stop being quiet in your room if your roommate sleeps until 4 p.m. every day?"

Is this journalism? Hell no, and neither are comics or Sudoku. It's silly, charming, refreshing and sometimes an interesting insight into what's going on in the world of the Daily Campus' readers. It's a format that, with some refinement, could be used at almost any newspaper site. Ask readers to share what they're seeing around them, thinking about and/or talking about, and then post the highlights for everyone to see. Voila, instant user-generated content. Hint: It's more interesting to readers than at least 90 percent of what you're printing now.

(Hat tip to my Philly.com colleague Jonathan Tannenwald, who came across Instant Daily in his insatiable wandering through media.)