It would be an understatement to say that a fair number of the journalists at the Tribune are uncomfortable with Tribune’s allowing users of evtrib.com to post anonymous comments after their stories.Disclosure is a core value and a rule under which they live. "Get it on the record," they are told, along with "document it" and "get both sides of the story." Anonymous source stories are frowned on and only allowed in print after being reviewed by senior editors.
So why, they want to know, is the newspaper allowing Web users to post comments, many of them half-baked, without the commenters having to sign their names? Why, they also want to know, do we let some commenters get away with the kind of nastiness associated with talk radio?
It’s a question that I’m still working through. But allow me to take a first swing at it.
A good number of people seem to like spouting off and giving their opinions. That is not only acceptable in a democracy, it’s healthy.
Some of the commenters are even thoughtful and that’s even healthier.
Occasionally people provide information our reporters didn’t have and information that is useful to readers.
I also suspect there is some entertainment value. I gather from comments I read that a number of people love to hate the frequent commenter who writes under the name of Todd Stallion. If loving to hate Todd keeps you coming back to our site, why would I want to keep you from having a good time?
But more than anything what drives me comes from the satisfaction of knowing that our stories get people to talking and thinking.
Too often in the old days when our stories only showed up in print, we reported what I thought were interesting, even provocative, stories. After the stories came–silence. Had they fallen quietly off the face of the earth? Did anyone read them? Had we made a difference? Did we get people talking or thinking?
Days were defined as good if you saw someone reading the Tribune while waiting to get their tires balanced or at a local restaurant over lunch. (OK, before you jump on that line, I was exaggerating to make a point.)
In today’s digital world, when commenters grab a hold of a story and tug it around until it’s well-worn, you know you’ve done your job. These days, that is happening a lot.
I join my colleague Chris Lavelle, who runs our Web site, and newsroom critics in their concerns about the road hogs and bullies who try to take over evtrib.com and discourage readers of goodwill from sharing their feelings, experiences and insights. The nastiness of some people saddens and disturbs me to no end.
So we are doing something about it.
Complex Internet legal issues come into play on user submitted comments. We can’t, for instance, edit comments piecemeal, taking out an offensive word here and phrase there.
We can, however, remove an entire comment that violates our rules. But the deal is we depend on the community of readers to help us police our rules. You and all of our Web site users can suggest the removal of comments that violate our rules.
Together we can keep the bullies and potty-mouths at bay.
We’re aggressively removing flagged comments that make personal attacks on others. If you can’t say something without being vulgar or vile, please go somewhere else and say it.
Soon we will require valid email addresses before allowing postings, which will create a level of disclosure about our comment posters that we don
