John A. Byrne, the editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com, takes a good photo for someone clearly hectic in running a site, magazine and all of the bells and whistles that come with social networking.

He's on Twitter, on Facebook and on Linkedin, but unlike many prominent journalists who position themselves for public attention, Byrne's principal attribute online is to engage the audience to help make BW a better property. It can almost be annoying, he's so inquisitive.

Byrne gave a lengthy interview to blogger Ben Lamothe at Econsultancy, and it's a strong insight into how to make social media work for your conventional organization. It's by no means an automated walk in the park; Byrne is forever Tweeting, posting and linking his users into his content and the decision-making behind it. He's incessantly asking readers to evaluate and inform, and he is generous in posting their ideas and refraining from negative judgment.

While a number of organizations measure time spent, unique visitors or page views as gauge of their success, Byrne has a mixture of indices to quantify engagement. He says the organization now rates a 34 and aims for 100. It's a good read for those of us working, or watching, the evolving newsroom.