Comments on reader comments: Enquirer and The Day

May 12, 2008 by Kurt
Filed under: commenting 

More commentary on one of my favorite topics: The need, ability and strategies for taking readers comments on your web site. Both were forwarded my way by colleagues at The Mother Ship.

Item one, a column by Cincinnati Enquirer editorial page editor David Wells. He discussed at length the process the newsroom used to foster and moderate conversation around the Cecelia Slaby case. She’s the 2-year-old girl who died in a hot car after being left there by her mother. The mother later was not charged in the case.

Item two is from The Day in New London, Conn. It was coverage of a media forum surrounding the issue of reader comments. The story ran last week.

Wells’ column was a great recitation of the process the newsroom used to monitor and foster debate around the inflammatory topic of the toddler’s death — and her mother’s culpability. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to the column. I only have the e-mail with the content forwarded to me. Maybe it was too long ago and the link is no longer active? Some highlights:

“The emotionally charged responses often made outlandish and irrelevant suppositions that took on unwarranted credibility. This led the Community Converstaion desk to examine and re-examine whether the public interest was being served by such unchecked comment.”

“…daily news meetings devote quite a bit of time to our online presentation….Discussions often involve whether a discussion board question is getting at the correct issue, whether a board should be rephrased or whether a new question should be posed in light of new developments.”

All the boards in the Slaby case were moderated pre-publication. The board topics evolved in that case from topics such as whether to the prosecutor made the right call to more introspective topics about the intensity of the public reaction: “What do you think this reaction says? Are we discussion the questions we really should be talking about here?”

Wells writes, “The most important part of any conversation is the ability to listen….The incoming comment can be overwhelming, and there is a tendency to tune a lot of it out….Resist that temptation.”

On item two, I’ll say less, since the link gives the story. I’m sorry it didn’t go into more detail than this on one of the paragraphs: “There were multiple opinions about what newspaper Web sites like theday.com can or should do to maintain some standard of civility, and whether anonymous posts should be allowed.”

I’d have liked to hear the “multiple opinions.” The story does note the example of The Norwich Bulletin, which “recently closed its site to comments due to high levels of profanity and irrelevant ranting.”

“Finally, folks found the wedding and engagement announcements and decided they would comment on the bride,” said Konrad, The Bulletin editor. He added that comments can harm the newspaper’s reputation if readers “can’t tell where the story ends and the comments begin.”

Beyond The Bulletin’s chosen course, other suggestions for moderating online comments included requiring users to confirm their identities with a credit card (impractical — my comment); grouping registered and anonymous posters separately (really? seems confusing); blocking users who submit too much irrelevant ranting (a given, if possible); disabling the comment function on certain stories (I agree); and depending on users to flag other users’ inappropriate comments (again, I agree).

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Comments

  • I'm a Cincinnati native recently returned home after 13 years working as a new media journalist, so I may be a bit biased here.

    I think newspapers take the easy road by claiming they are protecting their readers by once again exhibiting some editorial control over the comments. It shows a lack of understanding about two aspects of community building online:

    1) create a system that is self-contained and self-monitoring;
    and
    2) you are a part of the community, not the community in total

    Throughout the years, my aversion to EULAs and take-down policies have been rigid: I hate them; however, I always tried to make the argument that if you build the tools correctly for users, you shouldn't need a take-down policy because the community will do that for you.

    The end result is the same for the company, but the net gain for the community is they have a vested ownership in what is happening.

    News companies believe that everything must be washed down, scrubbed and cleaned up for the masses -- but in doing so, they have inadvertently (or maybe on purpose) treated their audience disrespectfully. They have said: We know better. Shut up and read.

    They have arbitrarily removed themselves as the hub of their community.

    Is it ugly at times? Yes. Does it make you wince? Absolutely.

    But to paraphrase: show me the person who will defend the absolute right of someone they fundamentally disagree with to speak freely and I'll show you someone who understands the First Amendment.

    That's the type of media outlet I want.

    Brad King

    And, as a side note, there is a great irony that the Enquirer touts its First Amendment desk as one of the grand traditions of the paper.
  • Some fresh ideas on comments in the Crunchberry Project, http://crunchberry.org/.
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