Last May, Washingtonpost.com introduced a new commenting system for its video features that seeks to make order of the sometimes chaotic comment field. Called "WebCom," the interface lays out comments in a web to show which are the most popular with other readers and which have received the most replies.

Unlike on many other newspaper sites, when a comment was made has no bearing on its placement in the web. Rather, those that have sparked the most follow-up discussion appear closer to the center and those ranked most popular by other readers appear the largest. Different colors are used to distinguish which comments are the most recent.

While few readers have expressed disapproval over the switch to WebCom, interestingly certain WaPo editors said they preferred the traditional list format so developers have since added that option. One drawback to the advanced interface is that it doesn't work on mobile devices or with certain older browsers, thus only about 85 percent of visitors can see it.

The fast-moving world of news media demands innovation, and there is little guarantee of success. Yet, as the foundering of the Printed Blog experiment in the US has shown, efforts at something new, whatever their success, emerge to inspire and inform. Thus, a new project, the Blogpaper is being developed in the UK based on a similar concept to the Printed Blog whereby content generated online is collated into a printed newsheet.

The project is in its beta stages. In theory, the blogpaper will be the collected effort of an online "news community", which will create written and multimedia content, to be ranked by fellow members of the community. If a piece of content receives sufficient support, it will be printed and moved onto the front pages of the site. The project aims to widen participation in publishing decisions, so that rather than a select group exerting control over what content is published and consequently read, the "blogpaper is aiming at putting the majority in charge".

In an interview with journalism.co.uk Anton Waldburg, explains how his team will learn from the trial and error of the late American experiment in terms of funding, content generation and sustainability.

True/Slant is a recent arrival on the online-only news scene, aiming to offer a voice not only to its 100 or so contributors, but to the reader and the advertiser also. It is not a typical news site offering breaking news, but rather features commentary, opinion and some original reporting. Based in New York, the start-up has just six full-time staff, led by founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin who has a total of 35 years of media experience, the last 12 of which has been in online news. The other employees have a similar mix of traditional and new media backgrounds, he said. T/S is a privately held company funded by Forbes Media and Velocity Interactive Group. The Editors Weblog spoke to Dvorkin to find out more.

The five differences

Dvorkin stressed the five ways in which T/S is "very different from any other news site." Firstly, because of the tools that it gives its journalists to create their own original content in real time. Second, because of its approach to copyright: contributors are encouraged to offer their perspective "around a piece of content that might have been produced elsewhere." Third, the relationship between the contributor and the audience is different because the contributors are contractually obliged to interact with their community. The last two differences are that the journalists have a variety of salary options and that the site has adopted an unusual approach to advertising.

At South by Southwest 2009, the talk entitled 'User Generated Content: State of the Union', was chaired by Chris Tolles of Topix.com, who said that the concept of UGC is "integral" to the Internet. He compared the top 10 sites now with those from 10 years ago, and noted the shift towards user content frameworks such as YouTube and Facebook. With regard to online news publications, the option for users to comment at the end of articles is common practice - although not without its problems.