So, you have a successful beat blog with a strong community and great two-way communication.

There is nothing more you can do to increase community involvement. Right? Several beat bloggers and news outlets would beg to differ. Some journalists are trying to take community involvement to the next level by allowing people to write guest posts.

Kent Fischer of The Dallas Morning News is beginning to accept guest posts for several reasons. First, he wants to get the community more involved in his blog on the Dallas Independent School District, and giving key community members a voice could help users feel more connected to his blog. After all, many of those people — teachers, administrators, school board members — are some of his most dedicated readers.

His second reason is a bit more pragmatic. Summer is a slow time for education reporters, and it can be difficult to come up with new content in the middle of summer break. Fischer is hoping that by allowing administrators, teachers and others to have a voice, it can keep his blog lively and engaging during the summer recess.

It seems like the perfect time of year to allow key people on his beat a chance to reflect on the past year and on what lies ahead. Fischer is hoping to get some of his first guest posts up this week, and Beat Blogging will be checking in on the experiment in the coming weeks to gauge its success. In the meantime, however, Fischer has been hoisting comments, which is another fantastic way to engage users (more on this community building technique to come later this week).

Matt Neznanski recently launched a new beat blog on sustainable living in Corvallis, Oregon. Sustainable living is a community-wide effort, which is why Neznanski is hoping to get as many community members as possible involved with the project. About 600 people showed up for a community meeting on sustainable living in April, which is a big reason Neznanski thought this new blog made sense. 

Neznanski wants to harness that energy:

Our city’s focus on sustainability means that we as a news organization will be spending a lot of time with it and the best way to learn how to live green and understand sustainability would be to do so together.

Our Green City site will gather our reporting to tell you about local people doing inspiring things to foster sustainability and we’ll direct you to events to meet people and learn more about it.

Most importantly, we’re hoping to use this space to get a conversation started with people around Corvallis, Albany and Benton and Linn Counties who’ve got stories and information they want to share.

Print has long been a medium of one-way communication, where reporters and editors spoke to readers. The Internet, however, allows for community members to have a voice. Both Fischer and Neznanski believe that there are community members who know more about their beats than they do. Neznanski in particular is hoping to act more as a facilitator and moderator than as a traditional reporter on his blog.

So, why not actively court their knowledge? Good guest blogging is about is about getting those people who know more than you about your beat to share their insight.