Why don’t more traditional media organizations do what I’m doing? Well, to be fair, some are; Boston.com now has 27 blogs; NECN has user submitted content, and it seems like every local TV affiliate has some way for us Great Unwashed to send in cellphone camera snaps.

I’m not really sure why relatively few online sites of print media allow “user generated content” (what a terribly unlovely term). My guess is that it cost them a lot of money to buy the software, install, and customize what they use for their current website, and whatever software they use doesn’t really have community features. So they either install something separate and unintegrated or wait for their vendor to get around to developing stuff.

Plus, unlike independents, they’re more conservative because they’ve got something to lose. Independents tend to just try setting up a metroblog as an experiment and see if it flies. This is where obscurity helps in the beginning — you’re allowed to make your mistakes with few people watching. Newspapers and magazines generally don’t have that luxury.

So I think my answer is, you don’t have to wait for anyone else to do it; you could do it yourself, now, very cheaply, if you wanted to try it.