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.

My house, my rules

June 12th, 2008 at 05:22pm Linda Grist Cunningham

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.

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3 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Leonardo duh Vinci  |  June 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    I will be considered a bigot, so let us get on with my thoughts on February of every year. It seems that our history books are quoted quite often to demonstrate how “white folk” have treated Afro-Americans over the years and we know that Thomas Jefferson didn’t practice what he preached. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, courts of law are dragged out every February to show bad the while folk have been.
    So I think you can say; the record proves it!!
    Okay, the finger points at the white folk. Naughty, naughty.
    Now I want to consult the African history books to see if they have been “good guys.” If I am to be accused of being naughty, I want the chance to read African record books. I want to read about the African Newtons, the African Hitlers, the African Schweitzers, the African Beethovens, to see if they have left a record for us to ponder. I hope you don’t tell me that Africa has left a rich history of knowledge and have bared their breasts to demonstrate how “un-naughty” they have been. Are the white folks guilty because we have the records to prove it?
    Now as to the standard of living of Africa compared to the standard of living in the U.S.today, according to what I see on television and in the nooze-papers, I see flys flying in and out of children’s noses and that AIDS runs rampant throughout that part of African that is the Afro-American homeland.
    Please don’t trot out Egypt as an example of Africa.
    And, I prithee, I don’t see mass emigration.

  • 2. Linda Grist Cunningham  |  June 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    I have no idea what your post is talking about and no idea how it connects to my blog post. So, here’s what “my house, my rules” actually means on my blog: Stick with the subject at hand. Carry on a civil conversation. If you want to wander afield as you have done here, you’ve got the rrstar.com forums and other Web sites to post this kind of stuff. So, your post is live for now, but if you’re not a good guest, it — and any others like it — are coming down.

  • 3. Leonardo duh Vinci  |  July 4th, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Gee, Mrs, Editor Person, I was in hopes you would find time to debunk my missile of above.

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