Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Archive for June 12th, 2008

My house, my rules

3 comments June 12th, 2008

My dad used that phrase a lot as the five of us were growing up and we didn’t like something he’d laid down the law on: my house, my rules. I remembered it as we were re-launching “comments” on www.rrstar.com. We had a comment-on-a-story function a year ago and we called it StoryChat. It’s back this week, simply called “comments.” We learned a lot of lessons from the old StoryChat about managing the rudeness of some posters, and the sheer audacity of others in claiming the First Amendment required us to let them defame others. As we took StoryChat down a year ago, I decided that if we ever brought it back it would be more on our terms and less on the terms of those who abuse the rights of free speech.

I figure it this way: Much as I would not want these posters in my kitchen sharing a cup of coffee, I don’t want them on our site spewing their brand of personal ugliness. There are other places they can do that; they can even build their own sites. We’re not clamping down on disagreements, or even the outrageously stupid. But, if it is a post I can’t read without embarrassment, if it’s a post that personally attacks me, my staff, or another poster (feel free to attack the arguments, but leave my personal life out of it), then out it goes. Our site is for civil civic conversation. Thanks, Dad, for reminding me: my house, my rules. I don’t need to explain why.