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The Los Angeles Times' Fred Alvarez reports that the Ventura County Star has removed the ability for readers to comment on individual stories on the newspaper's website, due to "a surge of nasty, off-topic comments in recent weeks."
This was something that Dean Landsman and Stephen Baker mentioned Thursday evening on a blog panel, with both stating that many staffers at publications are wary of someone "out there" posting inflammatory statements about the publication, about a subject of an article, or something completely unrelated - hence the reason we haven't seen more examples of this type of interaction between the public and the publication. Well, at least unmoderated interaction.
This follows almost exactly the pattern we experienced a couple years ago with opening a discussion forum on our newspaper site. Started off great! Then quickly degnerated into profane, insulting, worthless shouting. And death threats.
Posted by: Ryan at May 25, 2005 10:04 PM