An opportunity to make connections was overwhelmed by divisions
In the early days of the internet and online publication, many of us in the news media saw a great opportunity to bring our communities together and improve our connections with readers through the tool of story commenting. And, the innovation did offer some advantages we had not been able to offer before, some of which many readers found engaging and used productively.
But it also brought disadvantages that seemed only to grow with time, increasingly attracting participants who “debate” by personal insult, bullying and name calling and believe that “free speech” means the right to state any outrage in whatever offensive language one chooses. Eventually, that combative contingent of the audience overwhelmed the system, and news media outlets began discontinuing the practice.
The Daily Herald had been among the longest holdouts. We believed in the value of the community dialogue — and still do — and searched for resources and strategies to manage it productively. Ultimately, though, we found ourselves devoting too much time and too many resources to that objective, stealing them from time and resources we need to provide more detailed and thorough local news reporting, so this week we joined the ranks of organizations that have shut down commenting on online news stories altogether.
To understand the challenge of moderating such conversations, it is important to note the process involves monitoring comments across all ranges of the scores of stories and commentaries we publish at various locations on our website every day. We had some technical tools that helped, but these were imperfect and frequently led to complaints from people who were improperly banned as well as from people alerting us to inappropriate commenters who found ways to get around the algorithms meant to keep conversations in line.
In the immediate aftermath of our decision, which we explained this week on our homepage at www.dailyherald.com, we have heard from reasonable commenters who were understandably disappointed at losing a forum that they felt provided an outlet to interact with others over events in the news. We, it must be said, are disappointed, too.
But we also have heard from some like a reader who was grateful, noting “It was a pain to read through many comments to (find) the one that added anything, often not even finding that one.”
As I said, we still believe in the importance of productive community conversations involving the issues people care about, and we offer opportunities for them. We still permit commenting at the Daily Herald’s Facebook page, as well as the many Facebook community pages we host, and we encourage readers to write to fencepost@dailyherald.com to share their reactions to the news for possible publication in the “Your views” column on the Opinion Page.
We hope the many readers who are committed to civil interactions will take advantage of these opportunities.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.