Where do you stand on "reader comments"?

Captain_Kirk · Jan 2, 2008

fishwrapper said:

You vacation out in Iowa? I take back my ability to refrain from personal attacks!
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some call it vacation; some call it community service....

hockeybeat · Jan 2, 2008

Write-brained said:

Con - They bring to light that so many of our so few, supposedly educated readers, are a bunch of mindless, racist morans.
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I absolutely agree. When I read reader comments on the NY papers' sites, I end up feeling aghast and disgusted at the readers racism, bigotry and stupidity.

wickedwritah · Jan 2, 2008

I like Simon's idea, though I wonder how practical it is.

Introduce revenue AND help cut down on the site's riff-raff.

I'm just wondering if it would bring forth enough revenue to make it worthwhile.

Bill Brasky · Jan 2, 2008

I never read the damn things, personally. This plays into a pet peeve of mine...
I really don't care what anonymous people think about something they're not versed in. I know it's a huge push in our industry to get people involved and put more comments in the paper, but I'm kind of a snob. (One of the worst recent examples was when CNN reported on Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize and they had a quote from some resident of Bumfuck, U.S.A., saying how this made the prize meaningless. Well, when someone from Bumfuck, U.S.A. thinks the Nobel Peace Prize is meaningless, that says it all. They ought to cancel the awards.)
I think we should talk to people who have some kind of insight. In other words, I don't need to read Joe Sixpack's quotes about how the offense at State U. sucks. I'm more interested in what the college football writer or what other coaches think about the offense.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't have comments from the general public or put people in our stories. I just think it's worthless to have people who don't know what they're talking about commenting on stuff.

BillyT · Jan 2, 2008

A thread like this reminds me just why I rewad this site.

Great stuff.

I read the reader comments in a couple of the local papers fairly regularly. (Of course, the papers pump them up by listing "most commented-on" stories.

I have seen them get extremely personal. The girl who was arrested for felony assault for hitting another student in the high school lunch room posted (sure sounded like it could have her), and the other girls' friends wrote back.

And since a local PD leads the league in DWI arrests, every time there's a new one, the same usual commetnters go back and forth.

I am a huge believer in registration, whether it be newspaper sites or Internet message boards. Yes it can get nasty here, but you oughta see www.teachers.net, which does not have registration and is plagued with anonymous comments.

STLIrish · Jan 2, 2008

I like the charging for comments idea. Revenue + fewer assholes = a better thing for us.

jlee · Jan 2, 2008

fishwrapper said:

Really? What got this thread started was Dave perusing the Washington Post "Cracked" thread.
Now, you tell me this is a post of an imbecile or a racist. I will give you that it is the exception, but does it mean the voice, deliverance or message isn't worthwhile?

kodakmovement wrote:
It is a little troubling that after some initial concerned reactions were posted, it appears that friends of the writer rallied around him simply to protect his self-esteem--save him a red-faced entrance into the Post building after the holiday--without regard for the merits of the issues raised.

Those issues remain. Roughly, they seem to be:

1. He was given wide latitude to tell of a personal journey. Along the way, he dropped hints, almost anecdotally, that Post readers were treated to years of potentially slipshod and compromised reporting on the most serious issue in DC: drugs. The focus, though, remained on the writer's hardship, a kind of victimization set loftily above that of the other characters in the piece. Even a reference to making an attempt to borrow drug money from a police detective was related in an eerily compartmentalized way, as if it was Keystone Kops humor: Boy, if the cop had answered the phone, then I could have REALLY been in trouble (implied snicker). The present day author, not his depicted past self, remained disturbingly disconnected from the ethical bankruptcy implied. By becoming a player in the drug trade while a police reporter, he left, by the Post's own count, hundreds of thousands of daily readers in the position getting their news of the DC drug epidemic from a thoroughly compromised and untrustworthy source. He also directly worsened the drug problem by joining up as a funder, one of the many small-time contributors who, yes, hurt many others--regardless of how much Mr. Castaneda's colleagues would like to save him embarrassment, and regardless of how much his friends in the recovery community would like to dismiss criticism by giving him a hug, absolution, and assurances that he's courageous. Yes, we know the writer had limited room, and his main subject was himself. But it escaped the notice of no one but his apparent friends that the writer, even today, is so immersed in his own story and victimization that he's alarmingly oblivious to the large-scale victimization of others, including readers, to which he contributed. Read with a clear head. There was room in a piece of this length to acknowledge that coming in to work late, bedraggled, or missing out on his niece growing up, were among the least of his shortcomings.

2. Autobiographers may be self-centered by nature, but not necessarily to the point of monomania. It's insulting to DC that this piece, again and again, argued that its writer was a sort of gentrified character whose entrance into the drug world was glaringly out of place. NOT SO. He belonged in the crack houses every bit as much as Carrie or the man with the "Afro." How obnoxious. His generous contributions helped maintain the crack house culture. To me, he seemed a quite typical drug world character, and the Post was wrong to let him indulge his ego by emphasizing, over and over, that he was an odd man out, that it's a profound irony that even HE could end up shoulder to shoulder with DC's ostensible "worst elements." Such nonsense. If not Castaneda, then who? The implied, between-the-lines answer had classist overtones that were insulting and self-deluded.

3. No one expects headline news to be reported in fine prose. But the newspaper feature, or what was once called the human interest story, was invented to compete with magazines, and the writers were chosen because of writing skill. There is no "literary criticism" in the comments I've read here. There is a valid question of why, in a feature of gargantuan length, the most hackneyed--downright awful--writing was welcomed by Post editors, so that our "city newspaper" took on the embarrassing appearance of a suburban advertising rag. No literary criticism. Appalling writing in a feature deserves what I believe is called "journalism review."

4. Some comment posters appeared to cluster like covered wagons around the writer, defending his endeavor as courageous and even "essential"--as if we'd get no news of drugs were it not for his chest-puffing piece. It's valid to question this. There was no new picture of drugs or addiction painted here, and we do need that. I hope we get it more regularly in the Metro section. But this "picture" was nothing more than a beach painting lithograph--seen so often and done so badly that it numbs one to the subject. Also, one should indeed ask, courage or opportunism? It was pointed out in one comment that real recovery, which is hard work, is best carried out anonymously. 12-Step programs don't want spokespeople and are hurt by foolish ones. It's always tempting to go public in today's tolerant culture--saves one a lot of hard, internal work to cry out, "I have sinned!" and ask the public for a quick verdict. Sure, some will cry "Courageous!" You might even get laid for your performance, or promoted, or reinstated. But it's a sad substitute for the quiet self-reckoning true recovery demands.
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But if that were sent in as an LTE, I'd bet it would probably get printed. Maybe even as an Op-Ed column in a smaller area.

steveu · Jan 2, 2008

fishwrapper said:

You vacation out in Iowa? I take back my ability to refrain from personal attacks!
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Full disclosure: I tack on a few days in Chicago at the end.

Frank_Ridgeway · Jan 2, 2008

BillyT said:

A thread like this reminds me just why I rewad this site.
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TMI

Gold · Jan 2, 2008

I don't see why it couldn't be like a letter to the editor - you don't run all of them. Post comments but omit comments which are repetitious or idiotic racist/sexist/bigoted and show no merit. I would probably allow more latitude than a typical letter to the editor to have more back-and-forth. I wouldn't necessarily require names be posted, because the argument should be based on the logic rather than the name - on this board, if my arguments are presented well, they should have the same merit as Dave Kindred, for example.

Tom Petty · Jan 2, 2008

Gold said:

I don't see why it couldn't be like a letter to the editor - you don't run all of them. Post comments but omit comments which are repetitious or idiotic racist/sexist/bigoted and show no merit. I would probably allow more latitude than a typical letter to the editor to have more back-and-forth. I wouldn't necessarily require names be posted, because the argument should be based on the logic rather than the name - on this board, if my arguments are presented well, they should have the same merit as Dave Kindred, for example.
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bad example. i'm going with DK 100 times out of 100.

Twoback · Jan 2, 2008

Dave Kindred said:

I'm wondering about the value of "transparency" and "interactivity" that is supposed to be gained by running "reader comments" at the end of stories and columns.
A couple quotes from another thread:
***
"If you're going by the comments under the story to back you up, you've already lost. With little to no accountability needed, you can get the most vile, racists, sexist, whatever kind of '-ist' comments you want on any story. It's why I don't even read the comments on the Post's site unless it's a transportation story."
**
"Thank you. Put this story (a reporter on his crack addiction) in my local paper and I promise you 80% of the comments will say to deport the reporter back to Mexico.
"Want to absolutely degrade your product? Post reader comments."
***
Are we for or again'?
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This is the kind of arrogant crap you get from so many journalists. They so detest their customers, and then they wonder why nobody buys their product.
Yeah, blame it on the suits for pulling the trigger, but just remember your own arrogance helped load the gun.

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Where do you stand on "reader comments"?

Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

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