{"id":3041,"date":"2014-04-13T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T23:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=3041"},"modified":"2014-04-13T21:00:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T02:00:26","slug":"sun-times-turnoff-keep-comments-to-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2014\/04\/13\/sun-times-turnoff-keep-comments-to-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun-Times turnoff: Keep your comments to yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sun-Times<\/a><\/a>For an outfit that loves to brag about being tech savvy and \u201cdigital first,\u201d the Sun-Times<\/a> always seems to take two steps back for every step forward.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend came word of the latest retro move: Readers won\u2019t be allowed to post comments online about stories in any Sun-Times Media Group publications until a new system is put in place at some unspecified point in the future.<\/p>\n

What prompted the ban, according to a blog post<\/a> by Sun-Times managing editor Craig Newman, was the belief that comment threads \u201ctoo often turn into a morass of negativity, racism, hate speech and general trollish behaviors that detract from the content.\u201d The goal, he said, should be to \u201cfoster a productive discussion rather than an embarrassing mishmash of fringe ranting and ill-informed, shrill bomb-throwing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that unmoderated comment boards \u2014 or those that don\u2019t require verification (a Facebook account in the case of my blog<\/a>) \u2014 leave themselves open to abuse. But a big-city daily\u2019s digital news site that summarily shuts off dialogue with its readers strikes me as wrongheaded and backward-thinking to the extreme.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time the Sun-Times has turned a deaf ear to its readers. During my tenure there, editors bowed to the wishes of two notoriously thin-skinned columnists \u2014 Neil Steinberg and Jay Mariotti \u2014 and disabled the comment sections under their posts.<\/p>\n

\"CST<\/a>In this case, I don\u2019t understand why the Sun-Times couldn\u2019t continue to run reader comments or have someone moderate them while working out its new system. \u201cWe\u2019ll have more in the weeks to come on this development,\u201d Newman wrote, offering no specific time frame.<\/p>\n

\u201cApproach this news with cautious optimism,\u201d Chicagoist.com<\/a> weekend editor Jon Graef advised. \u201cNobody likes trolls, but we'll wait and see how the new commenting system the Sun-Times promises actually comes to fruition. Better yet, wait and see how discourse on the Sun-Times site actually changes for the better. It may not. The new boss, after all, is often the same as the old boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

I agree with Huffington Post<\/a> blogger Kyle Hillman, who criticized the Sun-Times in an exchange with his Twitter\u00a0followers: \u201cYou can't be an online media service and then shut off commenting because some people are mean,\u201d Hillman tweeted.<\/a> \u201cI think it comes with the territory of being an online media service. Don't like the underbelly, monitor it, but can't give up. . . . Yes, nothing better than a news site that reverts to the golden age of \u2018I write\u2019 \u2018you don't respond.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Sunday night update:<\/strong> Jim Kirk, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Sun-Times, provided the following response: \u201cWe are committed to an open dialogue with our readers. We are researching a number of options that allow for the exchange of opinions and ideas. Our goal is to develop one that treats everyone fairly. We believe a new system will encourage even more readers to engage with us. We are asking our readers for patience during this process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is the complete text<\/a> of Newman\u2019s message:<\/strong><\/p>\n

To our readers,<\/em><\/p>\n

Starting this weekend, the Chicago Sun-Times and the other titles in the Sun-Times Media group will temporarily cease to run comments with our articles.<\/em><\/p>\n

The world of Internet commenting offers a marvelous opportunity for discussion and the exchange of ideas. But as anyone who has ever ventured into a comment thread can attest, these forums too often turn into a morass of negativity, racism, hate speech and general trollish behaviors that detract from the content.<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, the general tone and demeanor is one of the chief criticisms we hear in regard to the usability and quality of our websites and articles. Not only have we heard your criticisms, but we often find ourselves as frustrated as our readers are with the tone and quality of commentary on our pages.<\/em><\/p>\n

To that end, we are working on development of a new commenting system we hope will not only allow for free discussion, but encourage increased quality of the commentary and help us better police the worst elements of these threads. We\u2019ll have more in the weeks to come on this development. In the meantime, we encourage you to connect with us on Facebook and Twitter to offer your thoughts, feedback and suggestions. This is your site and your voice is an important part of how we work as a community to better serve Chicago.<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, we are not doing away with comments. But we do want to take some time and work on the qualitative aspect of how they are handled and how we can foster a productive discussion rather than an embarrassing mishmash of fringe ranting and ill-informed, shrill bomb-throwing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you for your patience \u2013 and stay in touch (@suntimes and TheChicagoSunTimes on Facebook).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For an outfit that loves to brag about being tech savvy and \u201cdigital first,\u201d the Sun-Times always seems to take two steps back for every step forward. Over the weekend came word of the latest retro move: Readers won\u2019t be allowed to post comments online about stories in any Sun-Times Media Group publications until a... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3041"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3048,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions\/3048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}