I Recommend the T-Shirt

I dearly love John Byrne, who is an old friend and comrade-in-arms at Business Week in the old days, but I must say -- John! What were you thinking?

In a letter to readers posted on the BW Online website today, John, who heads the site, says as follows:

One of the most overused phrases in the online world is "reader engagement." Everyone claims they have it. Few do. We at BusinessWeek aim to make it real.

That's why we're now beginning to surface the many conversations on the site. Last month alone, we published more than 15,500 responses from readers—an impressive 23 comments for every story or blog post. We think of that 23-to-1 ratio as our reader engagement index. In the future, we think a metric like this will be more meaningful than page views or time spent on a site. . . .

At year end the top 100 online contributors will receive a little thank-you: T-shirts that read, "I Got In Your Face at BusinessWeek.com." And the readers who made the most thoughtful comments throughout the year will be invited to a dinner with our senior editors in New York City. It's just one way to thank you for being deeply and passionately engaged in what we believe is the world's best site for business news and analysis.

I like the t-shirt idea but.... dinner with our senior editors?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.