Newspaper to charge people to leave comments
Good news for anyone who’s seen their carefully-crafted words dismissed by some anonymous web poster as being ‘smug’, ‘pointless’, ‘unfunny’ or worse – one newspaper publisher is instituting a policy that readers must pay a fee to leave comments on its website.
The publisher is Massachusetts local newspaper The Sun Chronicle and the fee is minimal – a one-off charge of 99 cents. But this fee must be paid by credit card and that means providing a real name and address. And the name on the credit card is the name that will appear on comments. At the same time, the comment poster must acknowledge that they will abide by US state and federal law and that they are legally responsible for any content they post.
The Sun Chronicle had previously suspended commenting across its sites back in April and the publisher, the rather brilliantly named Oreste P D’Arconte, has said he hopes the move to stop anonymity would “eliminate past excesses that included blatant disregard for our appropriateness guidelines, blind accusations and unsubstantiated allegations”.
In the US, the argument goes that making people use their real name is an infringement of the right to free speech. People are fearful that it will make people afraid to express minority opinions. Which is true, but there is nothing to stop people from commenting anonymously at any number of other public forums – Mumsnet, for example, is a often hotbed of criticism of journalism about parenting.
Comments – even anonymous ones – equal engagement and for publishers (and even writers who are taking a pasting), a high number of responses is the sign that an article is a success.
Widespread adoption of such a policy would no doubt be welcomed by journalists who’ve experienced the stinging feeling that one harsh comment leaves – even if its couched between a dozen positive ones.
And there generally seems to be a feeling that losing anonymous web identities is the path to meaningful dialogue. I imagine more publishers will be testing out similar systems in the near future.
All Comments
This is indeed a bold move by the publisher, when probably less than 10% of it audience comment. Yet at the same time it is likely to remove excessive moderation costs for managing trolls and abusive comments that are rife in the news industry.
However, the introduction of a levy to have your voice heard may also be seen as negative. Why should an individual who has a valid argument be required to pay to voice their opinion?
The freedom of speech issues is a strong one, but from a publishing perspective it would be a joy to remove those endless anonymous posters who revel in their ability to post abuse and wind people up all behind some fake name and email address.
It would obviously reduce the number of comments, but at the same time you have to wonder how useful all those anon comments are.
99cents is simply an admin charge and for those committed to a given community you could see them paying. Will it take off? Maybe not, but it is brave idea.
We certainly agree this is a brave and innovative concept. The removal of the trolls, abusive and pointless diatribe from content is indeed welcome.
Yet we are not wholly convinced the ‘pay to say’ model is the right one.
Needless to say we are very keen to watch this one unfold, probably just as much as you are
Pay to say is a good way of putting it – but they did always use to say “put your money where your mouth is”.
Wow! What an unreal stupid idea! They think everybody is dreaming about posting comments on their site!? I’m just wondering what’s next?
A girl interviewing you and in 10 seconds before camera is “on air”, she says:
- “Oh, sorry, forgot to tell you, ten bucks for showing you on TV”
Newspaper observations: Forget inscrutability! The difficulty is administration (Scott Rosenberg) makes me conjecture what the Boston papers are doing with their remarks sections, if Rosenberg’s submission is on. Is anyone surveillance the store?
Dinar Iraqi
Maybe I’m missing something here but not sure why I would bother with this and would instead go for a Facebook integration.
It would serve the same purpose but with a greater chance of uptake.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by BrandRepublic, Media Week, media140 Worldwide, Samuel Coates, HelenJonesy and others. HelenJonesy said: Bye bye comments-RT @BrandRepublic: Interesting. US newspaper to charge people to comment-to “eliminate past excesses" http://bit.ly/9k3lzo [...]
[...] The idea of democracy is that everyone should have a say, and that includes the idiots; and nothing represents democracy more succinctly than the internet. Accordingly, plenty of the comments you will read on websites that invite discussion are less than considered and are often knee-jerk or just offensive. There’s something also to be said for the fact that – like a voter in a polling booth – most people who have their say online do so anonymously, allowing them to comfortably post vicious remarks without fear of being personally redressed (that’s why the story about the Massachusetts local newspaper The Sun Chronicle charging to comment is so interesting). [...]
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