ASNE: How to make story comments better
This is my column for the Winter 2009 edition of The American Editor, the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ quarterly magazine. As of now, it’s not posted on the ASNE’s site, but the magazine is out. It’s now posted here. I will join Saundra Keyes, journalism professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, in hosting a webcast about story comments on March 31.
Saundra’s cover story for the magazine was headlined, “Fiery Forums: Anonymous comments drive traffic to newspaper Web sites and generate news tips, but with embarrassing flame wars and damaged credibility, is the price too high to pay?” I’ll link to it when My item is available here.
I didn’t write this column by myself. But we’ll talk more about that later.
For now, let’s acknowledge that the news industry has experienced several spasms of doubt over the inclusion of readers’ comments on stories. Read more
Rebutting the arguments against story commenting
Inspired by Steve Outing’s recent post entitled, “If user comments go crazy, be thankful; seek more,” I wanted to generate ideas about rebutting the arguments against them.
Yes, there are some newspapers out there that haven’t implemented story comments yet. And there are journalists who are concerned about having story comments. I asked some of the members of the WiredJournalists social networking site to offer some of their favorite excuses — and their replies — to mix in with some of my own. Read more
Kurt's Tweets- Bravo. RT @pwthornton: "Banning unsigned online comments undermines the media’s role as a forum for debate.” http://bit.ly/bmZsOn
- I would like to just take the two steps forward and skip the one step back. How about that? Would that be OK?
- Still seeking talented journalists to run #Patch sites in two south St. Louis County communities. Know anyone? http://ow.ly/2Axnv
- Waiting for a listings collector to give her more #Patch marketing cards. The work never stops.
- Realizing how woefully out of touch I have been with this part of the county. (@ Saint Louis Bread Company) http://4sq.com/5z5Bfh