At least, according to this story from www.journalism.co.uk, they do.

The issue of how open and transparent online publishers – particularly of newspapers and magazines – should be with the comment and forum elements of their online offerings has come under much scrutiny in the UK, followed largely by various examples as seen within American journalism here and here. As is usually the case, State-side media firms are leading the way.

The latest comment control, monitoring and distribution system, as seen here by start-up Ameritocracy.com, places content firmly at the centre as the driving force of online success – and it’s through the power and leverage of users, visitors, and increasing numbers of intelligent, educated, connected, and social commentators that the value is added to the experience.

The power of the platform is always held in the hands of the audience – many newspapers have forgotten this at their peril.

The editorial entrepreneurship bodes well for the management team: the high-end focus on comments should scale across all further ventures into online content for the business – across blogs, social media content, as well as (of course) the uploaded news and article content itself.

There are additional benefits linked in to SEO, strong positioning online in a pre-planned niche, as well as increasing audience loyalty. Audience loyalty which is shared, multiplied, and developed further across other platforms. Pure online content gold.

Do we see the same focus within our British newspaper and magazine counterparts? I’ll refrain from commenting on that.

As we know already, the value held on powerful platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is held by the communities using the sites.

Without the audiences, and the user-generated-content, what’s left? A road walked unwittingly by Bebo and FriendsReunited.