A while back, I wrote a letter to the editor at the Globe deriding an op-ed it published by Doug Bailey. Though I was happy to have my voice heard (but not to have such an awful title applied to the letter), and I continue to peruse the pages of boston.com, leaving comments on occasion, and though my thesis remains the same (that you can not expect to be accurately informed by social media networks while simultaneously discounting newspaper website comment boards as valid places for arguments), I must admit that Doug Bailey had a point after all.
One liners and repetitive rhetorical rhapsodies lead what could be effective discourse down a road to whining and boring virtual screaming matches. People end up responding to one or two other folks and a single line of text and nothing is accomplished. Now, I don’t think comment boards should be banned. The crazies need to vent, and better on the internet than with an airplane. But I have not left thoughtful comments on those boards in a while. Not that I don’t want to be heard; I think it’s good that people have the option of speaking their mind in an environment once dominated by the titans of journalism. But I could not keep the company of the obnoxious anonymous posters that must make their opinion known, be it on items on which the paper chooses to report, or on things about which columnists choose to write. Do you really need to tell us that you wish you could have those two minutes back? Don’t read it if you’re not interested.
Naturally when I discovered Blue Mass Group I added the RSS feed to my Google Reader and just recently signed up for this account to point out an inaccuracy in a post. It looks like there is civil discourse and agreeable temperaments among the bloggers and commenters, and hopefully I’ll be able to provide my own commentary on politics and policy that might generate some discussion.
