E-Media Tidbits

Robert Scoble is the honorary CBO (Chief Blogging Officer) of Microsoft, and a good friend of mine. As Robert's popularity has grown over the years, so have the negative and rude comments attached to his blog. Yesterday, Robert announced that he had taken all he could stand and wouldn't be blogging for a few days. "I'm not having fun anymore. It's time to take some time away from the blog. Have a good week. ..."

It was all too familiar to me. I've heard the same sentiments come from faculty at Poynter who have had destructive comments rained upon their columns by people whose motives we just don't understand.

I bring this up for two reasons. The first: pound for pound, journalists probably get a higher volume of hate mail than people in any other industry. What advice do journalists have for bloggers who have gone from private journals to writing for thousands of people? How do you cope? How do you bring yourself to continue writing when you know someone is out there waiting to tear you down?

The second reason is that I would like to know this: What is the right thing to do about it? There is no question that personal attacks should be removed, but what about rude or vulgar comments? How do you draw the line between being challenged and being attacked? At what point do you delete comments? How do you value a comment that will be of no benefit to other readers? How do you balance removing what you don't want to hear with legitimately "taking out the trash"?

At Poynter, we've considered such things as developing a ranking system to help push down comments (or commenters) others don't find useful, similar to Slashdot's Karma system. I don't know that I'm a fan of that. In the past, I've described the Poynter forums as "Poynter's house." All are welcome; feel free to have a lively discussion or debate; but when things are getting broken it's time to call it a night.

What is your best advice?