HERE IS THE AUDIO FROM THE CALL FOR DOWNLOAD 

First of all, my thanks. You are taking this seriously
and I appreciate that greatly. And because
of your input things are changing. When I reported the substance of our
conversations to Michael Tippett, the co-founder of NowPublic, he said, quietly,
We've reached a new point in our development
 - our users are telling us how to run the joint.

I'm still letting that sink in.

Next: Changes Ahead

1. Our "Social Flagging" protocols and coding should be
rolled out very soon. Mostly it's just a matter of assembling the elements (user
interface, coding and DB stuff, and the all helper text - this is being discussed in the newsroom ). You can still comment on this screen 
or this one
by Marc Baumgartner,  the flagging rating
system, or the above-mentioned helper text. The audio
is here.

2. Welcome our last two News
Wranglers (at least for the forseeable future) Jarrett
Martineau and Doug
Long.   Please click through and see their
impressive credentials. 

3. The future of News
Wranglers: Wranglers are the future. Where you are in the hierarchy of members
on the site -"editors" - we're not adding to mostly because membership in this
group is not rules-based. What we hope to do is to increase our numbers though a
merit-based system: things like the number of times a member is favorited, or
have their stories flagged as Good Stuff. We're still working on the details
about this. Probably something like once a member hits the magic number, her
name will go forward as a nominee from one of the News Wranglers. We're hoping
to encourage all of you to begin the process of looking after a "channel"
(location or content area). I've had some individual discussions with many of
you about keeping your eyes open for particular stuff you are attracted
to.

4. "Draft" Versions. This is
something that Michael Meyers was intrigued by and appreciated your input on. I
will keep you posted on developments.

5. News WorkGroups.  This is
an idea that grows out of #s 3 and 4.  As you know, Victoria, Kaitlin and I put
in some  staff time posting our own stories. The main reason we post stories is
when we identify important or interesting stuff that members have not yet
contributed.  What we are going to start doing more frequently is creating an
"assignment" story to fill important holes, backdating it so that it doesn't
readily appear on the site; we'll create an RSS feed out of these items, and
then look for members - and hopefully News Wranglers - who want to lead a
workgroup around a particular story. Once the wrangler or member has taken the
assignment, it'll be published under the leader, hopefully soon after it's first
posted. 

A couple of requests from
ANG:  if we haven't talked about your specific interest (content-wise) let's do
that in the next while. Also for those of you who have not yet participated,
please let me know if you'd like to be removed from this
group.

Again, many thanks to all of
you who participated in our discussions last Monday.