NEW YORK, NY June 15 (DPI) – The New York Times says it plans to expand its number of reader-comment boards in the months ahead, just as some media outlets curtail or eliminate them outright.
The back-and-forth over the value and popularity of reader comments is part of the evolution of the internet as media outlets try to figure out a way to interact positively – and profitably – with readers, while also addressing their more destructive and unseemly aspects. Indeed, nearly all non-Facebook linked comment boards provide forums for unidentified comments that are often spiteful, uninformed and generated by paid trolls.
https://gigaom.com/2015/02/25/while-others-shut-down-comments-the-nyt-wants-to-expand-them/
Some comments on the article above suggested that removing comment boards was a mistake. News sites “want to censor unpopular opinions,” wrote one. Another even suggested that new sites charge a few cents for each post to improve the quality of posts overall:
I’d like to see a micro charge to make comments, like 2 cents, with a system that also allowed people to support comments they liked with money.
The comment boards on NYTimes.com have long been an ideological battleground, as some readers defend the NYT’s generally pro-government, pro-regulation, fairness-first agenda, while others attack it.
Never was the ideological battle more stark than after the publication last week of The US Navy’s elite Seal Team 6 and what The Times called its “troubling failures” – many readers simply called the Times’s journalists naive and reflexively anti-military for their report.
Even the Times followed up with a report on reader reaction: