But everyone realizes that there’s no going back, everyone will have to do it at some stage. Some are doing just because their rivals have blogs but others are really coming up with great models.

You can lead a horse to water…

Although I’m still waiting for the BBC 10 O’Clock News to run a photo submitted by and credited to “FluffyBunny69″, most parts of the BBC are perfectly happy for people to post under a pseudonym and don’t even require registration for people to participate in many of our comment and discussion based services. Most comments are post (checked after going live) or reactively (alert only) moderated. Our legal and editorial policy teams are increasingly understanding of the stuff formerly known as user generated content and more of it streams in than ever before.

It has, as you say Dan, taken some time to get here. And I agree with the comment from Joan above that some media and news organisations still don’t get it. I don’t mean ones that don’t have blogs or message boards or comments on articles - just about everyone has at least some mix of those features today. What I mean is newspapers and media organisations that have embraced the technologies but implemented them without much thought put into the techniques. Open ended, unfocused online discussions bring no editorial value to the audience and often end up rife with bickering, insults, and inappropriate or even threatening behaviour. Blogs that are simply periodic editorial columns written using the blog backend as a cheap content management system are blogs only in names, not all singing, dancing, obsessive, focused, discursive, engaging, linking out, real-live-all-singing-and-dancing-blogs.

So yes, we’ve come a long way, but there is still a long way to go - and sometimes getting it is a lot different than GETTING IT.

I worked in the newspaper industry for 22 years, mostly as an editor. So I know first-hand that the industry has had atrocious customer service at all levels and that that could spread to the blogging community.

Got a snotty reader on the telephone? No need to listen to them lecture. Get ‘em off the phone as quickly as possible.

What about a nut? Well, don’t even waste time talking to them. Just hang up.

No time to return readers’ calls? Then don’t call. Besides, 99 percent of them want to know if we got the press release they sent.

Don’t like a comment somebody posted to your blog? Just delete it.

Blogging journalists will have to be patient and responsive to readers who ask them questions about their blogs, or leave comments they don’t like. If they aren’t, then why bother blogging?

Also, the emergence of blogging journalists provides a great opportunity for anyone who wants to self-promote. I teach people how to work with the media.

And I tell them that if you want to pitch a story idea to a journalist, or approach them and introduce yourself and invite them to tap into your expertise, first search Tehnorati to see if that journalists blogs. If so, read the blog regularly, then start posting comments to it. That’s a fabulous way to get a journalist’s attention. Then, several days later, email them with your pitch.

What the orgs need, and what would help some of their journalists, is to bring in experienced bloggers to help them understand the social milieu they are entering. Most blogging (and forum/messageboard) mistakes that are made at newspapers–and magazines–comes from not understanding how to deal with negative feedback, message spam, trolls, splog, why *not* to engage in sock puppetry, etc. as much as how to be gracious and engage in conversation when “legit” comments roll in. These are skills that, while acknowledged as important in a recent study, are still given a great deal of short-shrift overall because they are assumed as being “natural.” High profile mistakes made by some high profile journalists in the past year are an indication that this really isn’t the case. Anyone can get lost out here without good guidance.