E-Media Tidbits

Remember a few weeks ago, when a controversial ombudsman's column -- which suggested that both Republicans and Democrats had accepted money from lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- caused a furor on the discussion forums at Washingtonpost.com? The discussion became so unruly that the website shut down the discussion area dealing with it. More than 700 heated posts came in about the column.

Well, the furor on that controversy seems tame compared to discussions that are taking place now over the Danish Muhammad cartoons.

Over at Topix.net, a Web news aggregator owned by several news companies and which two months ago revamped its system to support user comments on all the articles it indexes and links to, there have been more than 14,000 comments posted to its Denmark forums in the last week. Discussing the situation in his blog, Topix.net CEO Rich Skrenta writes: "There is a lot of heat in these forums. Lots of strong language, and many offensive posts. However there are also many genuine conversations occurring."

Should Topix.net consider shutting this down, the way Washingtonpost.com did? Skrenta: "We don't shut down the newspapers, TV stations, and radio every time public scandal or social unrest break out. If mass media is shifting to being in the hands of the masses, should we shut down mass discussion systems when public issues boil over? Isn't that when we need open discussion and media the most?"

Yep, that pretty much hits the nail on the head, in my view. Of course, the issue isn't purely black and white. A revered institution like the Washington Post has a reputation to uphold, so I won't condemn it for shutting down a discussion when things get totally out of hand. But I do think that organizations like the Post should loosen up and allow the public a bit more latitude to vent. (See Alan Abbey's great post from earlier today for an example of how a looser grip on public comments is the norm in some places outside the U.S.)

One other interesting bit from Skrenta's blog post: His staff added an IP-address geo-locater to the system to see where the comments were coming from. It's no surprise that people from around the world were taking part in the online discussion. Topix.net then added the location information to the discussion posts, so you could see where people were from (or at least a best guess).

Skrenta writes: "Since adding the user's location to each post, we've noticed a marked lift in the overall tone of the conversations. To be sure, there is still a lot of heat, but it seems like naming the town that someone is posting from has helped humanize some threads. It's not just a flamewar with faceless forum handles, there's a real person on the other end of the keyboard, they actually live somewhere."

There are some good lessons for news organizations hosting public discussions in this situation. One last one from Skrenta: "I'm also not sure it's healthy or appropriate to have a censor in Sunnyvale approving everything that participants in Tehran and The Hague want to say to each other."