Those damn internets

Wow, people say mean things on the Internets

Jay Rosen posted this up:

Transparency at the Post: Q & A with Jim Brady of Washingtonpost.com

My commentary: About transparency and the need for the Post to engage with critics, you’re not going to find anyone in the national press who gets it more than Jim Brady does. And so Jane Hamsher is wrong in her post about the comment shut down, where she raged at Brady, claiming he wanted to silence critics of the newspaper. “I’m assuming WaPo management just imperiously decided they didn’t want to have a public record of opposition to the embarrassment that is Deborah Howell, and Brady was forced to make some excuse for shutting it down.”

That’s a reckless assumption. I think he’ll try to bring the comment board back at post.blog, although I’m not sure “civility” should be the watchword there when he does. In fact Brady said in his online chat today that he hopes comments critical of Howell will be returned to their place in the dialogue. “We’ll go back through them and restore the ones that did not violate our rules.”

Meanwhile, flaming the friends of transparency isn’t helping anyone. Get it, Jane?

I don’t think “civility” gets Brady anywhere. And I’m not confident I know what he means when he says, “The issue here was civility.” Absent enforcement by pro-active moderators, The Rules the Post declares in force will simply not be in force. This is not a new finding about the Internet.

Jane Hamsher was therefore right when she said at her blog: “anyone who runs a board open to the public just knows that people who show up are often not going to play by the ‘rules’ you set up, in fact they’ll break them just because you have them.”

If that is correct (realistically, I think it is) then a commitment to having open comments means a commitment to moderating them carefully. If you don’t do that, then you can’t really say: it’s a shame a few rotten apples spoil it for everyone. To demand civility is one thing, to expect it something else.

Brady said he was expecting breakdowns with the outpouring at Howell, but it just got to be too much. I wonder what the results would be if “trusted readers” did the moderating for a few hours (2-3) a week, or something like that. Probably it wouldn’t work, but maybe someone reading this knows better.

We could just say: hire the people you need and re-open the boards, washingtonpost! But then Brady’s cost of being open to comment just increased, and that has consequences for future acts of openness. Bad for transparency at the Post. Driving up the internal costs of opening outward is not smart politics for those who want two-way newspapers that speak, listen, hear and get heard.

Jay,

You're wrong.

The Post doesn't want transparency. They didn't like the fact that they were challenged on a major issue of credibility and factual error. Deborah Howell refused to conceed this major error and when challenged, they mischaracterized the response and then shut down comments.

The New York Times has never had this problem, despite having open forums.

And then, there was no question that the comments, the fast majority of comments were not uncivil or needed moderation. Frankly, I got nastier comments for insulting Chicago-style hot dogs and had a raging debate over mac and cheese which would have curled Brady's hair. I won't even mention what happens when I discuss Manchester United.

Jim Brady says he wants an open dialogue with the public, but editors want it to be conducted on their terms. And it won't be. What I think the Beltway crowd doesn't get is this: people take politics very seriously.

They feel that Bush and the GOP is stealing their country and the Washington Media is not only standing by, but cheering them on. A cheap comment attacking Michael Moore oon MSNBC gets a flood of e-mails directed to them.

The people who post on our sites are exctremely passionate and concerned for this country, even if they don't live here. Brady's action did no credit to himself or his newspaper. It reads as just another sign of the media not listening to the public to people who feel the media is against them.

And you are completely wrong about moderation: Slashdot were pioneers in it and that is one wild place to post and always has been, Daily Kos is community moderated and troll free.

The Post clearly has the staff to both design forum software which could flag offensive words and monitor postings. It doesn't need volunteers to work for a multinational company for free. The problem is that they wanted to do it on the cheap.

If you check the posts, available from Democratic Underground, few crossed any lines of civil comment, but most were quite angry.

It would also do your argument some good to admit what we both know: journalists have very thin skins and hate criticism. It would be easy to see that Howell was unsettled by the vehemence of the comments directed her way and unnerved by them. Because criticism in journalism has been restricted to the occasional letter, not daily parusing of stories and constant e-mail contact. In short, the public is holding journalists accountable in real time, and that is a shock for many reporters and editors.

Friends of transparency would have never shut down their comments in the first place. People who want to create the illusion of transparency would.

posted by Steve @ 4:48:00 PM