A long-running soap opera legal case here in Boulder involves the Midyettes, a couple whose 10-week-old baby died. Molly Midyette is serving a jail term for not preventing the death of her son, while Alex Midyette is set to stand trial for child abuse resulting in death.

This week, Alex Midyette was granted a change of venue for his trial, due to the intense publicity surrounding the case. Just as with the fabled Jonbenet Ramsey case (Boulder’s most notorious criminal mystery), it’s just about impossible to find anyone in Boulder without knowledge of the Midyette case — and probably an opinion about Alex’s guilt, given his wife’s conviction.

Daily Camera commenters haven’t been reticent in expressing their opinions

What’s interesting about this change of venue is that the court cited Internet comments on local news websites (mostly the Boulder Daily Camera) and blogs as a primary reason for moving proceedings out of Boulder County, along with traditional media coverage. This may be the first time a court has relied so heavily on online comments to news stories in such a decision; it certainly won’t be the last.

The Camera’s Zak Brown covered the issue in this story, which includes a short quote from me.

On this blog (and many others), if you post a comment your personal avatar will automatically accompany your comment — assuming that you have an avatar assigned to your e-mail address using either Gravatar or MyBlogLog (both free services).

Many of you have yet to assign yourselves avatars. These can be comic characters (as I use) or graphic illustrations, or photos (of yourself or some object). So how about it? I’d love to see more photos and illustrations accompanying your comments!

(And I have some personal interest in this, since one of the projects I’m working on will let people create personal avatars. That’s not ready yet, but there are plenty of other options for creating avatars of yourself; or just use a photo.)

I’ve been reading Randy Cassingham’s This Is True “weird news” e-mail newsletter for many years. Well, Randy seems to be adopting more modern online trends. Now he’s doing video versions of his odd stories. Enjoy the latest:

(Actually, this is the first video of a “revamped” version of This Is True for YouTube. If I’d read his newsletter beyond the weekly funny news items, perhaps I’d have spotted the short (5-episode) first season! Oops.)

Boulder, Colorado. It’s a great town. A bit weird, but that’s why those of us who live here love it. Enjoy the recent “Naked Bike Ride.” Video by the Boulder Daily Camera. (No, I do not have the guts or desire to ever participate in this!)

TimesPeople, the new “social” feature of NYTimes.com, is intriguing. It’s early beta (Firefox extension), so I’ll forgive it for being a little awkward to figure out. Here’s a CNET interview with the developers:

A key element is finding your online friends also on it and sharing recommendations. I tried letting it look for people in my Gmail address book (which is huge) and it turned up zero folks who’ve also installed TimesPeople plug-in. I could use some “friends” to try it out. Hint, hint.

JD Lasica interviewed NYU’s Jay Rosen in the video below, in which Rosen gives an excellent overview of the Mayhill Fowler dual controversies. Fowler was the “citizen journalist” working for Off The Bus who captured Barack Obama’s “bitter about guns and religion” comment and Bill Clinton cursing out an author.

Rosen echoes my own thoughts about how “real” journalists are (over)reacting: The traditional rules of engagement that journalists live by don’t really apply to citizens, who a) don’t care about the rules and b) probably don’t know about them. “Citizens” don’t care about access to public figures in the way that pro journalists do, so they have no motivation to hold back when they experience something worth sharing, as Fowler did on those two occasions.

Citizen reporting threatens the club from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I must say, this Katie Couric Youtube channel of behind-the-scenes looks at the CBS anchor’s life when the “real” cameras aren’t on is pretty cool. Obviously, Couric is comfortable with any camera on, so it’s not a big deal, apparently, for someone to be following her around with a pocket video camera.

Here’s an example:

We’ll see if she keeps this up. At least Couric is “trying to get into the 21st Century,” as she says in this clip. ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson quips, “I’m still in the 19th Century.” Umm, that’s a problem, Charlie.

How to save newspapers … NOT!
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/socialstudies.php

Why does this idea persist? I realize that the “free content” model is not paying out as quickly as the newspaper industry wants it to — thus necessitating drastic cutbacks in response to the downward revenue spiral — but this author’s suggestion of newspaper publishers banding together and withholding news content unless consumers pay will just ACCELERATE the industry’s decline.

Fortunately, I don’t think the idea will ever get a serious try-out. (Past attempts over the last decade-plus have failed, other than for niche publishers with high-value, not easily found elsewhere content. Why beat a dead horse?)

Like most newspaper websites these days, the Boulder Daily Camera’s allows users to comment on stories. Staff monitors the comments and responds to user reports of abusive comments by removing offensive posts. It’s all good … well, some good, some not so.

When you read bad comments, remember the good

The Camera is my main local news source, and I find myself drawn to read beyond the reporter’s story often when an active discussion thread builds. I’m sure that the Camera’s user comments are just like everywhere else — in other words, there’s a lot of awful stuff to wade through. Offensive comments, crude humor, outright stupidity, trolls looking to pick a fight, insensitivity to other people’s suffering, etc.

I don’t mean to paint too bleak a picture, since there’s often intelligent commentary in these comment threads, too. (But I think the stupid and outrageous comments tend to stick in your memory more.)

A comment thread in a story this weekend really stuck out as representing why allowing user comments on news stories is a good thing despite all the bad. A lengthy thread built up around the story of a cyclist getting killed on Saturday when he was hit by a dump truck at a busy and dangerous intersection on the north edge of town.

Most commenters on this particular story were respectful of the people involved in a local tragedy, but one comment stood out as representing why user comments are a positive thing overall. You never know what may turn up; in this case it was from a person with some involvement in the tragedy who the Camera’s reporter did not reach.

“First of all, I want to send out my deepest condolences to the family of the cyclist that was killed from this horroble accident. May he rest in peace!

“The driver of the dump truck is my brother. I know first hand, how much this accident has affected my brother. He is very emotional and cries so much for the loss of this man who died. It is a tragic, tragic accident. I ask that you please keep my brother in your prayers too. He is so devastated by this accident.

“Again, I send out my deepest condolences for this man’s family. I will keep him and his family in my prayers.”

Kudos to DailyCamera.com (Boulder, CO) for adding a little creativity to what usually is a dull daily weather-forecast standup. (That’s Camera film critic Jeanine Fritz doing the weather.)

Here’s another thought to mix it up: Grab a random and interesting looking person off the street and ask them to read the weather forecast from your script. Call it citizen meteorology.