Instant Feedback

In a little more than 24 hours my ZooToo TV story about Puffy Paws Kitty Haven has generated more than 300 comments.

It also drew a phone call to me from a distraught Rick Kingston, co-founder of the shelter, who vented for more than 10 minutes about the reader comments. Many have come from people who believe that Rick and his wife Chrissy's intentions may be noble but that they're hoarding cats.

"We're getting slaughtered," he said.

Rick said that he felt fairly represented in the story, which is obviously my greatest concern. But I still got the ZooToo editors (after a phone call and two e-mails of my own) to update the text version of the story to make it more clear that all the cats are spayed or neutered and that the majority of them are available for adoption.

That's a great thing about the interactivity of new media. You get nearly instant feedback that can warn you if you omitted anything important from a story.

When I read several comments questioning whether the cats were being altered and why they weren't being adopted out, I knew I should try to edit the copy so it didn't leave readers with those questions.