The NY Times — finally! — allows user comments on stories

Public editor Clark Hoyt in the Sunday NY Times: Civil Discourse, Meet the Internet. Excerpt:

How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified
authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the
Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in
coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?

The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.

The issue is timely because last week, with very little notice, The
Times took baby steps toward letting readers comment on its Web site
about news articles and editorials, something scores of other
newspapers have long permitted. On Tuesday, readers were invited to
comment on a single article in Science Times and on the paper’s top
editorial, using a link that accompanied each. Few did because there
was no promotion of the change, but as the week went on and more
articles were opened to comment, participation picked up.

The
paper is creating a comment desk, starting with the hiring of four
part-time staffers, to screen all reader submissions before posting
them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business
environment. The Times has always allowed reader comments on the many
blogs it publishes, with those responses screened by the newsroom
staff. That experience suggests what the paper is letting itself in for. …

Though editors have mixed feelings about it, The Times has so far
bowed to Web custom by allowing readers to use screen names, as long as
they don’t claim to be Thomas Paine, Condi Rice or a famous porn star. …

Putting the knowledge of readers together with the journalism of The
Times, said [Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor who is in charge of the newsroom’s online efforts], could result in “news and information of greater power,
reach and quality than even a great newsroom can produce on its own.”

The Times’ decision to allow reader comments on stories and editorials comes about a decade late.

Hoyt unfortunately takes some unwarranted potshots at some of the less erudite postings on the Times website this week. But I don’t have a problem with the Times’ decision to curate comments and remove racist, libelous, dumb-ass crazy remarks. There are plenty of other places where readers can do that.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.