We recently received a message from a user of our website asking in rather colorful language why we don't allow comments on stories that involve race and crime. The answer is simple. We want comments on stories on our website to maintain a civil tone.
Here's what we post with every story: News-Gazette.com embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. News-Gazette.com reserves the right to remove any comment at its discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts.
It will be a year in February since we debuted our new website and started allowing comments on most stories that we post, where before we only rarely allowed comments. We also added a discussion forum [2] to the website where people discuss all sorts of issues. One of the things we learned over the last year is that comments on stories that involve race and crime quickly deteriorate into personal attacks or hate speech. So we have decided not to allow comments on stories that contain those elements. On all other stories, we monitor comments to ensure they remain civil, and we remove comments that we think cross the line.
That said, we remove darned few comments. Over the last year, we have seen thousands of comments on stories, so we know that visitors to the site see it as a place where they can make their opinions known. Of those thousands of comments, we probably remove probably an average of fewer than two a week. One of our goals for the site was to encourage civil interaction with and among our readers, and I think readers understand.
We do monitor comments on stories, but we don't edit them for misspellings, inaccuracies and other problems, which are the responsibility of the commenters. Monitoring comments takes quite a commitment of time from our staff, particularly Online Editor Mike Howie, but we find it's necessary to maintain the standards we've set.
What a joke.. today you have refused to have any comments about a 7th grader being hit getting off a bus? Your kidding right? No comments at all during the polar bear hunters or their subsequent arrests? Look at the Bloomington Indiana news paper......they have comments about everything over a hundred comments about trash in the streets./ You guys> your lucky to get 25+ comments when JJ decided to maybe leave town. Get real with your comments section. It aint working!
Ha. People in the Internet era don't take kindly to closing down the comment sections. Continue at your own risk, N-G. People don't surf the web just to be informed anymore -- they want to be heard. If I were you I'd follow the lead of other newspapers and either throw the doors open to all comments or hire some extra help to weed out the stuff that's deemed offensive. Keep in mind that we're all one or two clicks from the most offensive material you can imagine. One other thing. Newspapers still attract a generally civic-minded and conscientious audience. Maybe it's one of newspapers' new responsibilities to allow such people a platform. During the recent racial violence in Champaign, aside from the police our local officials and religious leaders were totally absent of their responsibilities. They said not a word. We needed some voices of reason and you have not helped by dismissing everyone as haters and closing the comment sections.
I'm all for free speech but I have to wonder how many people upset about being unable to comment are like me and do not subscribe to the N-G. Seems if we're not willing to pay for their service and feel their service is worthwhile enough to warrant reading, commenting, etc, we really can't complain. It's like not voting - at least submit a blank ballot if you don't like anyone but don't not vote and feel you are justified to complain about politicians. I say if you want unlimited comments, you need to either pay for it or start your own site.
I'm a subscriber but I think if the N-G is going to put their version of events out there for everyone to see, then everyone should be able to comment on it. I think this country's deep resentment against the news media is partly the result of decades of not being able to speak out against the news industry's version of events effectively enough. Sure you could gripe to the reporter, but after the original story is out what good does that do? Yes, there were letters to the editor, etc., but you had to sit down and compose a letter, and even then you might see parts of it chopped out, or a headline applied to it that missed the point. And you had to put your name on it. Don't think editors and reporters are the only ones putting their necks on the line in this business. People have been fired and attacked over their quotes in the paper and what they put in letters to the editor. Anonymous comments aren't always pretty but they serve an important purpose. Not everyone is in a position where they can put their names behind their opinion.
Although N-G can obviously do whatever they want (so long as it's legal and they can pay the bills) and freeloaders like myself don't really have a leg to stand on to complain, maybe comments on hot button issues that would otherwise be closed could be open only to people with verified identities (at a minimum subscribers) and possibly require disclosure of their identity with their post. Perhaps that would be a happy medium?