CoPress

In the age of interactive media, there’s an infinite opportunity for open discussion and idea sharing through comments. Turning these comments into a real conversation, however, is a challenge that news organizations confront on a daily basis.

“We want to position ourselves as the center of community while at the same time driving out hateful, hurtful and trollish commenters,” said Jack Lail, Director of News Innovation at the Knoxville News Sentinel, in an email. “It has proven difficult to say the least.”

One of the great things about the Web is that it allows anyone to comment what they think — but perhaps the biggest downfall to that is many of these comments are crude, malicious, self-promotional or plainly irrelevant.

“Many people do not care that we are students and that we are not yet professionals, so many mature readers bash our writers for their opinions or uneducated writing,” wrote Chris Ullyott, Webmaster at The Daily Titan. “ Sometimes it can be pretty discouraging.”

At the Los Angeles Times, too, Blog Editor Tony Pierce reported that one to two users a week on average are banned from ever commenting again. This is especially prevalent in stories about politics, immigration and sports, where readers have a tendency to bicker at each other rather than commenting on the story itself.

“We want to get readers’ opinions up as quickly as possible to engage in discussion,” said Pierce. “It’s very valuable to hear their point of view.”

And while papers strive for diverse opinions, there’s a fine line between running an active-user site and becoming a user-run site.

“There are a lot of places on the Internet for people to express themselves so we don’t feel we are stopping them [by monitoring comments],” Pierce relayed. “ We want to make a quality discussion.”

At The Daily Titan, computers pre-screen comments, weeding out spam and advertisement links.

“We try to create an environment friendly to users of all ages,” said Ullyott. “We do not moderate comments but we do employ a strict blacklist of “no-no words.”

Apart from software, with the July launch of the E.W. Scripps’ Asphalt Design, the Knoxville News Sentinel changed the way they manage users, this time concentrating on abnormal user activity.

“We are reviewing comments of users who just signed up,” said Lail. “And those who may have been registered for some time, but suddenly started commenting.”

Some newspapers, however, still manually monitor comments. Even with three editors to divvy up the task, Pierce spends about an hour a day pre-screening each comment that users leave on every article on the Los Angeles Times and the LA Now blog sites.

But in the digital age of endless deadlines and dwindling resources, monitoring may fall last on the to-do list. Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Robert J. Lopez attests to this.

“Stuff just falls through the cracks,” said Lopez. “The reality is there isn’t much personnel to do all that, especially when news breaks.”

Which raises the questions: why do newspapers still include comments when resources are scarce and editors could be using their time doing more quality journalism? And is creating a quality discussion equivalent to quality journalism?

Similar questions were brought up at the APME Online Credibility Workshop last May, an effort Knoxville News Sentinel initiated to reach a consensus on when to remove commenters and ban users.

“A certain percentage of users feel the comments area are their area and not ours,” said Lail.  “And a certain other percentage of users hold us responsible, at least in part, for everything that is posted on the Website.”

Perhaps the answer to this dialectic problem lies in having readers participate in the monitoring process.

The OC Register implemented a policy that gives readers the ability to silence commenters through flagging, said Online Quality Checker Carol Priest. For users who find a comment objectionable, a “remove comment” button appears next to every post. OC Register revised its policy two years ago — it now takes only two readers for a post to come down.

Following policies like that of MinnPost — which holds their readers accountable by requiring that they register and use their full name to comment — may free up editors and actually encourage constructive dialogue.

On another hand, the inconsistency with commenting policies may stem from news organizations not fully accepting user-generated content. According to a recent article, Dr. Piet Bakker found in his study about Dutch newspapers and user-generated content that the news value of comments is nominal. News organizations tend to use comments not for their newsworthiness but as a way to drive traffic and keep users coming back. Perhaps before a news organization decides on its commenting policy, it should redefine its relationship with the audience and embrace participatory journalism.

Which of these cases is closest to how your news organization handles comments? Is it time to start rethinking and reframing this essential part of Web culture? Take this opportunity to sound off in — you guessed it — the comments.

Useful links:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=103&aid=123290

http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

http://www.wiredjournalists.com/forum/topics/worth-talking-about-do-you

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/roll/2009/06/last-week-we-put-up.html