Newspaper editor retires amidst ‘all the noise’ of commenters
by Abigail Prendergast (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)
John Irby retired from his position as editor at the Bismarck Tribune on Sept. 9, saying he could not handle the “civil discourse” of anonymous user comments. Irby wrote candidly about his resignation, saying he was sick of being a scapegoat.
Irby had quite the run in the journalism world – he has spent the past 40 years in the industry, with four-and-a-half of them working for North Dakota’s Bismarck Tribune.
The 61-year-old newspaper editor announced his September 9 retirement last week due to the fact that his “skin has thinned” regarding anonymous comments on the paper’s website.
“I am retiring because I am tired of being the whipping boy,” Irby said bluntly in a final column in last Sunday’s issue of the Tribune. “Life is too short to put up with all the noise.”
With the editor’s farewell and last piece came once again the debate of online etiquette and if news media formats even have any grounds to patrol it. According to the website Poynter, Irby himself says he is not necessarily against the online comments themselves, but instead wanted “controls to encourage civil discourse.”
“When people don’t have to sign their names to their words, they become more careless,” Irby said. “The discourse is not as civil as it once was, particularly because of anonymous comments.”
Several news media websites have played around with various ideas in an effort to keep comments and discussions civil within the seemingly no-holds-barred world of online commenting.
While some sites are perfectly content with anonymity, others feel necessity for users to identify themselves. “They add a great deal to the debate, and I think anonymity is important. … Anonymity makes people more honest,” Rob Port, operator of SayAnythingBlog.com said. “Do anonymous blog comments make discourse less civil? That presumes the discourse was civil before blogging and blog comments, which it wasn’t.”
As far as Irby is concerned, there is “less tolerance for alternative points of view and that’s what journalism has always been about — about presenting as many different voices as possible.” He went on to point out that it is getting “increasingly hard to do that in journalism without getting attacked.”
Chad Nodland, an attorney in Bismarck and member of NorthDecoder.com, said that Web forums can be a means for the “civil” dialogue Irby speaks of – but he confesses that the user content can and does go awry.
“I’m generally for civil discourse,” said Nodland. “The unfortunate truth, though, is that much of the discourse in the world over the past 20 or 30 years has been pretty uncivil.”
This article was originally published on Digital Journal [Link]
Survey: News site’s comment tools can attract young readers
by David Silverberg
A new survey found younger news readers are three times more likely than those 55 and older to say that engagement tools will make them more likely to visit a site. Overall, though, a third of those surveyed said they never comment on sites.
News sites continue to push for engagement features to make their content “sticky”, but what kind of response are they getting from commenters? According to a new survey, it depends on the demographic.The Ad Age/Ipsos Observer American Consumer Survey reports “fully half of the 1,003 households that took part in our online survey said that adding more tools for engagement would have zero impact on the likelihood that they would visit a news site.”
Also, 37 percent of respondents said they never comment on news sites, while nine percent say they often comment.
The survey went deeper to find out who engages most on news sites. Readers aged 18 to 24 are three times more likely than readers 55-plus to visit a news site based on its engagement tools. Close to 20 percent of younger readers comment on news sites compared to four percent of the 55-plus crowd.
The survey offers some advice: “If media want to attract the readers who will be reading them in some media or another in five, 10 and 15 years, they’d better be investing in the tools to engage them the way they want to be engaged now. And then they’d better be ready to re-invent as needed.”The survey didn’t specify what kind of news site (or articles) the survey respondents had read recently.
In July, media expert Anil Dash wrote a popular blog post calling out publishers for having shoddy commenting guidelines. He said deplorable comment threads are the responsibility of news publishers. “When people are saying ruinously cruel things about each other, and you’re the person who made it possible, it’s 100% your fault.”
His advice for publishers? “You should make a budget that supports having a good community, or you should find another line of work”, and he adds, “Fix your communities. Stop allowing and excusing destructive and pointless conversations to be the fuel for your business.”
This article was originally published on Digital Journal [Link]
Digital Journal launches updated Comments plugin using Facebook(R) Platform
Social networking giant Facebook has announced its next big move: An updated commenting system is now available to third-parties. Digital Journal is happy to announce it is one of only two Canadian media sites to have the new Comments live and in use.
Digital Journal today revealed a new social commenting section using Facebook Platform to let readers engage with articles, blogs and images across Digital Journal’s entire news network using their Facebook account.
Digital Journal’s integration of the updated Facebook Comments plugin comes on the heels of Facebook’s announcement today that it has launched an update to its Comments plugin that makes it easier for readers to comment on publisher websites with their real identity, and share articles with friends. Digital Journal is one of two Canadian news outlets to work with Facebook on the plugin ahead of the launch.
“As a digital media network with contributors in 200 countries around the world, DigitalJournal.com offers a very unique social news experience for readers,” said Chris Hogg, CEO of Digital Journal, Inc. “We’re pushing the envelope and aiming to define what social news experiences should be all about. Facebook’s new comments plugin offers readers a new and very powerful way to engage and communicate with one another.”
Digital Journal readers will now see a Facebook Comments Box on the bottom of articles, blogs and images, allowing them to comment on articles using their Facebook account. The entire commenting system is powered by Facebook Platform and offers readers richer features to interact with their friends.
“The social layer is one of the deepest and most important parts of a modern media business,” said Hogg, “The Facebook comments plugin is just one more way we’re working to give readers the cutting-edge tools they need to engage with content in new ways.”
Digital Journal today introduces the latest version of the Facebook comments plugin that will further customize the media experience at DigitalJournal.com. These features include:
Comment syndication:
Readers can comment on DigitalJournal.com and share the comment to their Facebook profile. When a friend responds within Facebook, that comment can also appear on DigitalJournal.com. Vice versa, when someone replies to a comment made on Digital Journal, a reader will also see it in their Facebook feed. This two-way integration allows comments and discussion to take place both within Facebook and on Digital Journal — the conversation will be syndicated to wherever readers are.
Sorting comments by relevance:
Comments are ranked based on a reader’s social graph, meaning comments made by friends appear before strangers’ discussions. This feature is designed to help readers find conversations more likely to interest them, with people they know. Facebook Comments also show readers other relevant comments, including comments from friends of friends, comments that have received a large number of replies, or comments that have the most Likes.
Comment as a brand or company:
Readers who also manage a Facebook Page on behalf of a company can also comment as that Page. This enables people to comment as themselves or make a statement on behalf of a business, celebrity, government official and more. Comments made on behalf of a Page will also be shared back to the Page’s Wall. This feature opens up great new potential for dialogue between brands and individuals.
Digital Journal is a Toronto-based global digital media news network operated by Digital Journal, Inc. a leader and pioneer in social news delivery with millions of readers.
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