It started when Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell threw a fit and decided to stop doing her job:
Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has reportedly posted a comment on the Post's internal message board announcing that she has learned the following "lesson" from exchanges with Media Matters for America: "From now on, I don't reply." Howell's language did not make clear whether she meant that she would no longer reply to any criticism, or only to that registered by Media Matters.
[from MediaMatters for America]
Then, irate Post readers flooded the Post’s blog with critiques over another of Howell’s ombud columns. So the Post did what any civic-minded journalistic institution would do -- it stuck its fingers in its ears and said, “La la la, we can’t hear you!”:
Jim Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post's Web site, who took down a popular reader blog Thursday after it overflowed with harsh messages about Ombudsman Deborah Howell, said the blog would likely return in the future. But, he said the Web site would have to find some better screening technology to filter out obscenities."We got about 1,000 posts and at least 150 to 200 were using either profanity, hate speech or personal attacks," Brady said about the responses to Howell's controversial column last Sunday, in which she stated that indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both political parties, when most research shows he only gave directly to Republicans.
Brady said the comments forced his staff to spend hours time reviewing the responses and tossing out those that were unusable for the blog. "We don't allow profanity or name-calling and we need to figure out a way to keep it clean," he told E&P late Thursday. "It was a real burden.
"I don't think there was much dialogue going and it is a little frustrating to be accused of not taking criticism when I think we did a good job of that," he said.
[from Editor & Publisher]
How much profanity and name-calling there actually was is open to debate, though it seems unlikely there was much, because any cheap-ass forum software you can download for free allows admins to block naughty words, and how dumb can the Post be not to have implemented such a precaution? Actually, it isn’t open to debate: the postings are mirrored here. (Here’s a hint: I’m not seeing profanity, hate speech, or personal attacks, unless stuff like this -- which comes after numerous calm, reasonable, fact-backed explanations of Howell’s wrongness -- qualifies: “This is amazing. Howell defends herself by citing a Republican talking point which is supported by no evidence whatsoever. If WaPo believes that this hack is representing the interests of its readers, then there really is no reason to believe a word in this rag. What a waste.”)
But it just keeps gettin’ better. My nemesis, The New York Times, has the temerity to offer this:
The Washington Post stopped accepting reader comments on one of its blogs yesterday, saying it had drawn too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman.The closing was the second time in recent months that a major newspaper has stopped accepting feedback from readers in a Web forum. An experiment in allowing the public to edit editorials in The Los Angeles Times lasted just two days in June before it was shut because pornographic material was being posted on the site.
I say “temerity” because, as Howell is accused of doing, the Times just accepted the explanation of one party in the dispute when hard evidence to the contrary was readily available. And because, actually, this was the third time that a major newspaper has stopped accepting feedback from readers, as Kos explained earlier this week:
Lurching along towards irrelevancy, The New York Times has disconnected its columnists' public emails and has moved their contact info behind the paywall - hidden back there with the rest of their content in the nether-regions of "TimeSelect". And as for papers who carry those Op-Ed columns, they have been told to delete any email addresses which appear along with the column. God forbid the unsubscribing unwashed should deign to contact one of their columnists.
There’s an odd combination of cluelessness and desperation in the reek coming off these old-media corps -- they know something is wrong with the way they’re doing business today, but they’re just not sure how to fix it, and manage to go in precisely the wrong direction in their oblivious attempts. Meanwhile, Mother Jones offers some interesting commentary that reminds us that the trials big media are facing today from new technologies and the speeding up of news cycles is nothing new, and has been happening regularly since at least the development of the telegraph.
But then, there’s nothing more American than not learning from the past.
(Jesus’ General has a hilarious look at what a new site from the Post might look like if it decided to continue its antijournalistic, antireader temper tantrum.)
