Letting readers do the work

Tips from the trenches from three people whose jobs rely on user-generated content:

Linda Strean, GreatSchools.net (used by SignOn)
Her site is based on parent reviews, 100,000 schools, 300,000 reviews. but not three per school, some have more many have none
they premoderate all reviews, actually 50 stay-at-home moms paid a bit to moderate them.
Alvardo elementary school

Lila King, CNN
runs a user participation group. 3 other producers
every day to try to engage audience. uses iReport.
But before you can integrate any ugc into storytelling, you have to get it. (And verify it)
You need to mine the newsroom - how can people participate? need to do a loto of evangelizing.
Good topics weather, spot news and obituaries.
Don't just dump notebook. It has to be better than what you'd get if you searched for topic on flickr.
After Virginia Tech attack, CNN set up pages for victims, then asked for tributes. They flowed in.
UPDATED: take a look at the form CNN has readers submit to offer up material. They really have this thought through. On a related note, here's the BBC's statement of standards on using user creaed material, which is really the gold standard.

Patrick Cooper, USA TODAY
Network journalism, try to create a network valuable to what people are seeing? what are they saying? what are are they doing?
USAT's Football Blog squad 60 blogs, stream them into every story. part of our coverage.
Pop Candy forum
Passport woes Asked readers for their stories, got good stuff
Reader photos Take your best weather shots - run the best of the week in paper on Saturday.
get name email, phone number check it out
UPDATED: At USA Today, it looks like you have to become a member to contribute stuff. "What are the benefits of membership?As a USATODAY.com member, you can participate in the nation's conversation by contributing your own comments and reviews throughout the entire USATODAY.com site. Interact with our expert journalists, your input will guide the conversation. Connect with other readers on the site. Create your own blog. Upload photos. Find and interact with people like you."

How does one vet this stuff?
USAToday uses a "collaborative moderating system." Cooper said they were happy with Pluck's sitelife product, the software the site uses for user created material.
King told how you have to use the sniff test to check it sometimes, relating how someone with CNN was calling to check on a fire picture, and the woman who sent it in apologized it had taken so long but she wasn't that fast with Photoshop. It turned out the woman had painstakingly erased a power line cutting across the main image, which is very bad. The picture wasn't used.

What I took from this is that it takes a lot of work and preparation to harvest this stuff, and it's probably only going to work for large outfits who have a big field to seed. It needs to be a full-time job, and the site has to be geared to gather and display the material, the display being the only real reward contributors get from their work.

UPDATED: Here's another take on the panel.