Your mom is an online journalism expert
Well, maybe that’s not true, but she was onto something: Remember when your mom told you, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?” Same idea applies to hosting comment discussions on news sites.
Have you ever noticed the relatively low quality of the comments readers leave on stories on your daily newspaper’s Web site — or on a hugely popular site like YouTube? They’re usually just this side of worthless, and, in the case of YouTube, they’re often some of the most mindless, meaningless drivel you’ve ever wasted eye power on.
In the case of news sites, Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review blames the reporters themselves and their publishers, not the commenters who often can’t seem to string together anything more coherent than four pre-written partisan talking points glued together by a few hard-working conjunctions. He makes I point I’d tend to agree with: If you, the news organization, can’t manage a comment discussion, don’t bother having one. Just shut if off.
Not only that, but when it comes to doing the work of managing that discussion, it’s not a task to be left to an “online editor” or someone who simply deletes any comment that drops an F-bomb (keep an eye on our recent vice presidents). The person best suited to manage the discussion, to keep the discussion meaningfully on track, to even learn from that discussion, is the writer of the story.
Niles is onto something here. Read his piece for a taste of what online news could be like, and imagine your favorite local reporter really being a part of the crowd — which I’ve written about when discussing Minneapolis’ own Jason DeRusha. But note that Niles isn’t being weighed down by technical minutiae:
Notice that I’ve written nothing about anonymous comments. Or whether comments should be held for review before publication. That’s not because I don’t care about those issues, or don’t have an opinion. I do. But I’ve also found that an individual publication’s stand on those issues doesn’t determine whether it manages its comment community successfully or not. I’ve seen great discussions with and without anonymous posters. As well as lousy ones. I’ve seen great conversations both with and without prior review. And lousy ones, too.
Same goes for blogs. I’ve watched many great blogs get too big too quick, and the comment discussions devolve into nothingness. It’s hard work to keep a discussion interesting when you start to get several dozen comments deep. But don’t shy away from the work. “[O]n newspaper websites, when the article goes up, that’s the end of the production process,” Niles wrote, “On community-focused websites, when the article goes up, that’s the beginning.”
