Hi: I'm Doreen Marchionni (Ph.D. '09, Missouri School of Journalism). I'll be your intergalactic pilot on this journey through my dissertation. Send whiskey, please.
I wrote a bit about news-story commenting in a post last week. But I want to come back to the issue, partly in light of discussions at the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) NewsTrain Workshop I attended in Tacoma, Wash.
When I talk to editors about my online research on journalism-as-a-conversation, they often ask if that just refers to story comments. It doesn’t. Conversational journalism as scholars, audiences and journalism-reform advocates think about it generally is highly proactive — engaging ordinary citizens on stories before or during the reporting process, for instance, not after a story has run.
But commenting is giving journalists serious heartburn these days. One former editing colleague of mine at the conference said a reporter worried about pursuing a sensitive story for fear of the abuse she’d get from knuckleheads in story comments. A professor at the conference, meanwhile, said she’s conducting a national survey of journalists to determine the effect of commenting on journalists’ morale and self-censorship.
I only recently noticed The New York Times allows commenting on select stories, such as op-ed pieces. I’d love to know the criteria they use to decide which ones get commenting (if any of you know, do tell!) because it might help other news organizations.
But in the end, this kind of thing comes down to the peculiar sensibilities of an organization, its goals and its understanding of a community. If pressed, I might suggest enabling comments on stories about significant public-policy changes (school-levy increases, elimination of a local bus route) but closely monitoring those discussions. Block anyone whose comments aren’t constructive or consistently rude. Period.
All of this applies to private bloggers and writers, too. Critics of Apple industry analyst John Gruber,* who doesn’t allow comments on his blog Daring Fireball, just started their own blog, where his readers can pipe off about his ideas. I allow comments because I want your feedback and ideas, provided you’re respectful, of course. But I have the luxury of not being a mainstream news organization.
Just keep in mind that for every argument to allow comments, there’s a counter argument. The news media are only now dealing with this, but it’s an old battle on the Internet. And if the goal is to enrich your journalism by incorporating more citizen voices and experiences — conversational journalism — story commenting isn’t going to cut it.
* Disclosure: My husband and I are friends of John and his wife, Amy Jane Gruber, and I personally find them delightful and engaging on all matters.
