Bill Mitchell
Director of Publishing and Editor of Poynter Online

I was struck by these two Romenesko items:

• Want to e-mail NYT columnists? Subscribe to TimesSelect
• Washington Post shuts off post.blog comments indefinitely
  

The long, twisting march of American journalism into the digital future got knocked off course in a couple of important spots this week.

screengrab from nytimes.com E-mail form to reach columnists on TimesSelect

Tuesday evening, Editor & Publisher picked up on a report by the Raw Story blog that The New York Times had decided to limit correspondence with Times columnists to paid subscribers. The paper instructed editorial page editors around the country to remove the e-mail addresses previously published at the bottom of Times columns, and said that sending e-mail to the columnists' previously published addresses will no longer reach them. Under the new system, only subscribers to TimesSelect (free to subscribers to the print edition; $49.95 to others) will have e-mail access to the columnists, and then only via an online form behind the TimesSelect wall.

Thursday afternoon, WashingtonPost.com executive editor Jim Brady announced that the site had removed the ability for readers to comment on post.blog, the paper's window into its inner workings. Brady said the site removed the comments function "indefinitely" as a result of "personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech."

Both moves have been denounced by bloggers as ever more evidence of the cluelessness of mainstream media. But there's a more interesting story here. Consider these moves from the perspectives of the news organizations involved.

The Times has provided little explanation for its hide-the-e-mail maneuver, but some plausible motivations might include its interest in building a subscriber base for TimesSelect and rendering what must be a torrent of e-mail to its columnists a bit more manageable. At WashingtonPost.com, executive editor Brady posted an update in response to the criticism of its decision Thursday night, explaining: "We removed hundreds of these (offensive) posts over the past few days, and it was becoming a significant burden on us to try and keep the comments area free of profanity and name-calling."

Call it cluelessness if you like, but the reality is that mainstream media are still struggling to find ways of publishing (and interacting) online that will generate significant revenue, uphold standards that rule out profanity and personal attacks, and manage the resources required to get the job done.

With those goals in mind, hiding e-mail addresses and blocking comments look a lot more like stop-gap measures than long-term solutions. But what are the solutions? More effective (and automated) filtering of e-mail messages and blog comments? More demanding registration (free as well as paid) requirements? Enlisting users as content cops willing to help site managers enforce reasonable rules? Please post your ideas via feedback below or send them to bmitch@poynter.org.