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Have you ever sat down to watch the 6pm news and seen a segment you absolutely had to discuss with someone? Up until now, you've had essentially three options for this sort of thing: a) talk with whoever happens to be in the same room with you at the time, b) wait until the next day and talk to people at work, hoping they watched the same broadcast you did, or c) post an entry to your personal blog soliciting conversation about it.
Now, there's an easier way.
If you see a segment on the NBC Nightly News you want to discuss, simply head to the new Newsvine-powered NBC Nightly News Discussion Club at nightly.newsvine.com and an inventory of every single video clip from the most recent broadcast will be waiting for you to replay, forward to friends, or start a discussion about. The launch of the Discussion Club coincides with the unveiling of a brand new NBC Nightly News site and embeddable video player, both of which put NBC at the head of the network news class in terms of online video user experience. We're really excited to be a part of this and to have the Newsvine community essentially set the tone for the how discussions evolve.
Since the Discussion Club works a bit differently than groups have in the past on Newsvine, let's go over what's different, and what the thinking has been behind the design and functionality. Keep in mind, of course, that everything below is subject to evolve at the requests and needs of the club members over time.
Why a "Club"?
One of the biggest problems mainstream media companies have with opening up material for public discussion is the incredible amount of dreck that comes through from what we like to call "drive-by commenters". These are individuals who have no interest in discussing issues but use open comment fields as a form of digital graffiti. Obama won the Iowa Caucuses? Let's make racist jokes. Hillary won in New Hampshire? Let's make sexist jokes. It happens in almost every open forum on the internet. Topix argues frequently that the quality of comments has very little to do with whether a user is registered/unregistered/newcomer/established, etc etc etc. We've never agreed with this philosophy at Newsvine and in fact, we've gone even further in our thinking and essentially traded conversation *quantity* for conversation *quality* since day one. That's why we require registration. That's why all new users start out in the Greenhouse (many of which never even get out!). That's why we have the Code of Honor. That's why Newsvine has never sought to be an anarchistic free-for-all community, but rather a place where intelligent people gather to discuss intelligent things. Does this always produce respectful, insightful discourse? No. But the water level here is much higher than it is almost everywhere else on the web.
So, continuing that philosophy, we thought we'd create a members-only group for people to discuss subjects featured on the NBC Nightly News. This group will be linked to heavily from MSNBC and NBC so there will be plenty of people coming over who have never been to Newsvine. There will probably be a decent amount of drive-by attempts, hence, club "membership".
There are two ways to request membership to the Discussion Club. Directly via a link in the "Members" panel, or the way it will happen for most new visitors: simply leaving a comment. When a new user leaves a comment on a video segment, group moderators will be notified, and if they approve the comment, the user is automatically let into the group. This will serve as a first line of defense against malevolent commenters. The second line of defense will be the standard group membership revocation which moderators can already do with current Newsvine groups.
So to sum up, we're not calling this a Discussion Club to be high falootin', but rather to establish up-front that this is a place to discuss news segments in a civil, intelligent fashion. If people want to discuss the news in other ways, there are other places they can go.
Public in its privateness
About a week ago, we introduced the concept of publicly viewable group discussions and some Newsvine members were wondering what the big picture purpose of them was. Well, this is sort of what they were designed for. The Nightly News Discussion Club is viewable by everyone, but only group members can participate in the discussions. It's a way of advertising group membership to the world without giving everyone keys immediately.
Participation of moderators and NBC staff
There are essentially two types of moderators for this group: Newsvine community moderators and NBC News employees.
The inimitable Mykola Bilokonsky will serve as the inaugural moderator of this group but other community members will no doubt join him as it becomes necessary and beneficial. Mykola has been a thought-leader for group functionality ever since the Newsvine public beta, producing scores and scores of articles which have shaped the way we've thought about social interaction from the get-go. He is a superuser in almost every sense of the word and we couldn't think of anyone better suited to help kick the tires for something like this. Newsvine community moderators can accept members, boot members, chime in on Code of Honor and other membership issues, and help shape the way the group evolves in the near future. They are obviously not there to impose political philosophies on the group.
NBC News employees can also perform community admin functions, but their main role is to speak to editorial issues within the news segments themselves. For instance, let's say you're watching a video segment of a behind-the-scenes trip inside a candidate's campaign headquarters and you have a question about how multiple news organizations interact with each other when they are all in the same headquarters at the same time. Do they collaborate? Do they just keep their distance? You could theoretically ask this question in the comment thread and an NBC News employee could answer your answer with first hand experience. Often times, there is more to a story than what makes it onto the 6 o'clock news, and the Discussion Club will be a great place to bring more information to the surface.
Video!
Yes! It's hard to believe we've managed to run a news site for two years without having a single piece of video on the site. That obviously ends today! Look for more video embedding abilities on Newsvine in the near future as well.
A sneak peek at customizable groups
The Nightly News Discussion Club is built on the same architecture that has powered our customizable front page for the last several months. Behind the scenes, we're able to drag and drop modules, add RSS feeds, and do a lot of what you can already do on the Newsvine front page. You can expect this functionality to make its way into all Newsvine groups within the next few months, as well as the ability to customize the sorts of design elements that make the Discussion Club unique; a branded header, custom colors, and a whole lot more.
We're very excited about the prospects for this discussion platform and we're anxious to see how it works in the wild.
So without further ado, it's live!
