Disclaimer: At the risk of exposing myself for working for the liberal conservative communist pro-business Austin Un-American-Statesman, I must disclose I am a lead developer for the statesman.com/austin360.com/statesmanclassifieds.com family of websites. The Statesman catches a lot of flack, but I’m not a content guy.

That said, I love the Chronicle. The paper version, that is. I loathe when I meet someone for the second time and their comment is “Oh yeah, you work for the Chronicle, right?” because their caliber of website is not even remotely the same. Of course, the Statesman could be doing a lot more, but it may be that there will always be the reluctance to overturn the old guard, Print. I remember reading that article and agreeing with a lot of their points, especially in that it’s not blogging if reporters are the only one’s that are featured. It’s just stream-of-consciousness journalism. I think our “Talk of Austin” feature on some stories is a step in the right direction. I look forward to the Chronicle improving their online influence within the Austin community.

They should have a comment section for every story and instead of “letters to the editor” that’s in print, they should have a forum where people can post topics (basically a letter to the editor) and people could give their two cents.

In the paper they have the letters and sometimes staff response. It would be cool if they posted a letter and then afterwards “Reader John Doe comments…”. All they would have to do is pick the best letters to the editors in the forum every week. Heck, let the readers rate them and do it that way.

It would encourage community involvement in the site, increase readership, and best of all for them, increase online ad-sales.