Some of the best message boards I check out have this one excellent quality - they dedicate an open thread (that constantly stays in view) to alerting the community to timely tv and radio appearances, news articles, books and movies that are relevant to the topics discussed. This would be a great remedy to cutting down the amount of diaries that are created only to alert the community to a specific article or tv appearance that the community will find relevant. Someone is always posting a diary asking people what they are reading or what are the best political movies they've seen and I've found some great stuff from them. There are many times I read or see something that I think many in the community would enjoy but I don't think it deserves it's own diary and the open thread is 6 posts down with 300 comments. It would be nice to have it all in one place and constantly updating so someone can just post - "Howard Dean on Air America now!" or "Frontline has a special on Iraq airing next Tuesday" or "I just finished 'Imperial Hubris' an I fully recommend it. (I do)" It will give us one place to check out before with go rent a movie, the bookstore, or turn on a tv. It will also give those of us with Tivo the ability to know in advance of a tv appearance we otherwise would have missed because we missed the diary alerting us to it. This can be done simply enough. Kos can create an open thread called "Media Alerts" and link to it in the menu section. What do you think?
Here's a perfect example: NPR in NYC 93.9 is doing a segment on bloggers as we speak! 10:43am EST