Newspaper websites’ comment sections can be some of the roughest places on the Internet, with frequently anonymous writers taking shots at everyone from President Barack Obama to their fellow contributors.
That liveliness makes the forums a popular feature and keeps readers come back to newspapers’ sites – no small thing for an industry reeling from a collapse in advertising sales and the migration of readers to the Internet.
Recently, though, two local publications decided the level of vitriol among their commenters had gotten out of hand, and took the drastic step of removing the function altogether.
The first was The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, which suspended the comments section of its website indefinitely on April 13. A month later, the East Bay Newspapers chain, which publishes weeklies including the Bristol Phoenix and the Sakonnet Times, did the same on its site, EastBayRI.com.
“The comments section had become the battleground for a handful of anonymous posters who were controlling dialogue, discussion and debate,” Scott Pickering, the chain’s managing editor, wrote in a note to readers. “The frequency of caustic and often irrelevant comments increased to the point that … there was no longer any value in continuing to host the open forums.”
In an interview, Pickering said the problem had worsened over time. The company tried fighting back by banning some individuals, but often they would return under a new screenname – frequently just switching one letter or number from the one that had been banned.
Pickering said another problem was the significant amount of time his employees were spending policing comments. That echoed a common complaint at papers, many of which have seen their staffs shrink in recent years.
At least 80 percent of the reaction to the comments suspension has been positive, he added.
In an e-mail, Sun Chronicle Publisher Oreste D’Arconte said he was not ready to comment on his paper’s policy because it was still under review. But in a column on May 3, he strongly defended the decision.
“We asked you to adhere to our appropriateness policy. Some of you didn’t,” D’Arconte wrote. “We asked some of you to, please, not comment again. You opened another account with a different name and came back in. We took down some of your worst remarks. You put them back up. Repeatedly.
The decisions are part of a larger trend in the news industry of re-examining comments at publications from The Washington Post to new media outlets like HuffingtonPost.com.
“We have come to a moment where – I don’t want to say everyone is questioning the value of comments, but I think everyone is questioning how to make comments valuable,” said Dan Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, adding that few organizations thought hard about their policies when they first introduced comments.
Unlike letters to the editor, which are curated and limited in number, comment sections are more akin to the phone lines papers used to have that let readers call in with anonymous complaints, Kennedy said.
Although he has sympathy for cash-strapped organizations not wanting to devote significant resources to policing comments, Kennedy said he does not believe the sections will work well without being moderated.
Another option would be to house discussions on a paper’s Facebook page, as The Marblehead Reporter in Massachusetts has done. Since the vast majority of Facebook users are registered under their real names, they are more likely to make constructive, thoughtful comments, he said.
Indeed, both The Sun Chronicle and Easy Bay Newspapers emphasize that they are not giving up on comments.
The Sun is preparing to bring back comments once it finishes creating a new registration program, and Pickering said East Bay definitely wants to allow them again if it can figure out the right way to do so.
“We love people being able to talk with each other and offer their opinions and debate. It’s a wonderful thing for a community,” he said. “We just need to change the platform.” •
