The Telegraph Media Group in the UK has appointed Iain Martin to a newly created position, head of comment and community.

Martin, currently group executive editor of politics, will oversee all comment pages and community areas for the Telegraph's three main platforms including The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and telegraph.co.uk.

Martin will also oversee the platforms that host reader comments, including My Telegraph, a news customization tool, and Your View, an open area which lists brief summaries of the Telegraph's stories, and encourages readers to comment by sparking a debate about those issues.

As more newspapers ramp up their interaction with readers (or their multimedia offerings: see the new position created by the Glasgow Herald Group), they increasingly need to have dedicated staff to monitor user-generated content in a way that benefits their journalistic product.

Source: Brand Republic