My post last weekend on the Globe’s comments section generated, amusingly, 138 comments. Apparently, bloggers and blog readers like to talk about nothing so much as blogging!
Anyway, here’s an interesting postscript to the whole topic. The Globe is right now running an in-depth seven-part series on Ted Kennedy, from his childhood to (this Sunday) the present day. Today’s installment: Chappaquiddick. One can only imagine what the commentariat at the Globe would be saying about that.
But indeed, one can only imagine. Because the Globe is not allowing comments on any of the Kennedy stories. Why? Because the Kennedy stories are not “news,” but rather a retrospective? But why should that matter? Because they’re afraid that the comments will be overwhelmingly negative? But surely that would defeat the purpose of allowing comments in the first place. If you only allow comments on stories you think will generate positive commentary, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
A curious choice. I’d like to know why they made it.
UPDATE: As Judy notes in the comments, they have now opened up comments, including on past articles. Maybe it was just a technical glitch. So, if you’re up for it, here are the Chappaquiddick comments.
When I first saw this in the paper, I had to double check to make sure he hadn’t died without my noticing.
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p>I know he’s seriously ill, but this strikes me as both premature and morbid…
This is essentially a eulogy. I checked too.
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p>Question: should the Globe allow comments on obituaries? Given the mean-spirtedness of what I see on nearly every forum that allows comments, I don’t doubt that anonymous posters would find fault in many people’s deaths.
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p>Is that an appropriate venue for venom?
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p>Maybe that’s why they are restricting comments, because you know there would be a substantial amount of venom from a vocal minority of Howie Carr disciples.
For example.
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p>Plus, as has been pointed out, this isn’t an obituary!
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p>Also, as I said in the post, is anticipating “a substantial amount of venom” really a reason to shut down comments on a particular post?
the Globe’s just too much of an asshole to realize it’s in poor taste. it’s essentially snuff journalism, as far as I’m concerned. it’s not writing, it’s pornography.
……….even out there on the internet. They have their own sites anyway.
they’re in very bad taste
… be downsizing by the time Kennedy does pass on and they wanted to take advantage of the reporter labor while they still had it. Now they can just re-run this stuff later.
that despite the resemblance, the guy on the cart isn’t Senator Kennedy?
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I don’t read the comments on Globe stories, but the one’s in my local paper’s website range the moronic to the psychotic. One can easily imagine how the lunatic fringe would opine about Chappaquiddick.
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I can’t track the number of times the good folks over at RMG have found an excuse to post a photograph of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Just read the comments on political stories, whether they reference the Kennedys or not. Comments in the Globe have their own counterpart to the famous Godwin’s Law: Chappaquidduck’s Law: The probability that someone will reference Ted K., Mary K. and Chappaquidduck will approach 1. That is met if not surpassed in every comment thread.
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p>I wonder how Mary’s survivors like it.
…to allow comments, but moderate them?
Comment moderation is extremely time-consuming. The Globe publishes, what, 50 or so articles on a typical day? Not all of them generate a lot of comments, but several of them typically generate 50-100 comments. If you moderate, then someone has to review every one of them, every day.
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p>Plus, where do you draw the line? Obviously, they can screen out profanity and overtly offensive speech, but beyond that, line-drawing gets very hard very fast.