The journalism blogoshpere is still on this story, with one of the better ongoing discussions occuring at PressThink.
What they need to do now:
1) To answer charges that the comments were deleted based on viewpoint and not language, they need to make all the deleted comments available by request or behind some kind of secure firewall. Alternatively, go back and hand-edit the foul language out of all the posts (A previous poster had also thought this way before I posted on the PressThink blog). This is the fastest way WPNI can restore its trust and transparency to the online readership.
2) Set up a moderating system for blogs. Comments must be pre approved, and a light presence established. A well trained moderator would have stopped this in the bud and chanelled the discussion more effectively but still on topic.
3)Give moderators or someone at post.com the resources and authority to bring affected participants into the mix. In this case, a moderator observing the build up could have contacted Howell and have her respond. Any blogger on post.com must agree to respond immediately if so contacted. If I'm reading the timeline right, this built from Sunday to Thursday, which is far too long on the net.
Its a problem as newsrooms work with their online components, as chains of authority havent been thought out. But at the moment this started, post.com should have been her effective boss and required a timely response, fact checking, etc from Howell.
4) Visibly post clear rules of engagement for commentors. Enforce them.
Others will come to mind as I think more on this.
stefan...
ReplyDeletegood analysis...however...
there is really no evidence that the Postblog was deluged with inappropriate comments.
The Postblog was deluged with comments, period, and didn't have the resources to deal with the problem that a certain percentage of the deluge would be inappropriate.
Now, I see that you have enabled comment moderation. My guess, based on a quick check of your blog, is that comment moderation doesn't take up a lot of your time.
Now, imagine if you had to read 1000 comments, 990 of them just as reasonable as this one was -- because 10 of the comments were 'inappropriate'. What would you do?
That is much closer to what Brady was faced with, and what he reacted to....
Hi,
ReplyDeletewell thats the mystery isnt it...if the comments were inappropiate as they maintain or not, so I'm advocating they make the record available in some way that they were comfortable with, in order to clear any confusion or doubt.
True this blog is easly to maintain, but remember this blog documents work I do for a newspaper site where I routinely pre-approve 300 to 400 comments a day, plus manage wire stories, breaking news, etc. Ive had my share of hot topics and issues where that count goes well above the norm, and we'll still read them. Im not perfect and an occasional one slips, and we still read everyone of them.