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 August 12th, 2008

Who has the time to post comments?

2 comments August 12th, 2008

Web site “comments” can be — though often are not — important insights into what’s going on in a community’s collective brain. And, because comments are usually posted anonymously, the common wisdom has been that anonymity breeds a certain clarity and credibility since the poster doesn’t fear identification.

Yeah, it works that way in my dreams. It works that way in some Ph.D. candidate’s thesis. It doesn’t work that way — or not very often — in the real world. In the real world, there’s a preponderance of posters with way too much time on their hands and a deep-rooted hostility in their brains. They get ugly with each other and the world in general. They can’t express an idea that doesn’t drip with most every “-ism” and phobia. They are black holes sucking the rest of us into their unholy and unhappy vortex.

We take down the posts and ban the posters, exercises in futility that I’d liken to herding cats or containing Silly Putty. But we try, mightily. Our Terms of Use help, and best is mine: My house, my rules. If I don’t like what you’re posting, you must go somewhere else to post it.

Today, Howard Owens, director of digital publishing for GateHouse Media, shared this laugh-out-loud “article” from the Onion, the satirical weekly famous on college campuses (and printed here at the Register Star, by the way.) Some days, I am pretty sure this is what most comments posters are doing. Enjoy.