Comment!
April 8th, 2008 | by Brad King |When newspapers — or any media sources — opens up its comment section, it’s good if the people in charge actually pay attention, and engage, with the readers.
That’s the advice coming from the Online Journalism Review site today.
I’m flabbergasted that it’s even necessary to bring this up, which only reinforces my belief that traditional media types are in serious trouble. A few months back, a friend was telling me a story about the editor-in-chief of the paper where they work. He has a propensity to shut down comment sections when he doesn’t like what’s happening, which surely grinds any sense of community to a halt — or at the very least, makes growing that community near impossible at times.
There seems to be two knee-jerk reactions to comment sections by management: delete what you don’t like or shut down the comment sections.
This from our bastions of free speech.
Editors who will lecture you (ad nausea) about the First Amendment will — without much provocation or thought — shut down an entire comment section because they are uncomfortable with what’s being said.
I’ve long argued that all points of vice are not equal in the news.
Earlier this year, I angered the Creation Museum in Kentucky when I ignored them for a story I did on Craig Venter’s group working to develop synthetic life in a lab. Why? I was doing a science story about scientists. Say what you will, but until I can find a reputable science body that validates the ideas of the Creationists (in this case, that it was impossible to create life in a lab because only God could do that — with all do respects, I guess, to Dolly the cloned sheep), I am going to ignore that point of view.
And maybe the view of the editors is that all readers comments are not equal. I’m not sure I could argue against that; however, we know that both unilateral action against communities and disregard for them will end up killing them online.
Or, if disregard doesn’t kill them, it certainly renders them useless. They become eyesores, weeds that spring up in your garden.
