The Spokesman-Review
A panel in Idaho's legislature rejected a bill that would have forced newspapers to disclose the identities of commenters in the event of a lawsuit, Betsy Z. Russell reports in The Spokesman-Review. Last summer, Idaho Judge John Patrick Luster ordered The Spokesman-Review to reveal the name of a commenter after a Kootenai County politician sued the paper, saying she'd been libeled in a comments section in a blog post.

That commenter revealed herself before it came to that. But there's an interesting footnote to the story of the rejected bill: It was submitted by Rep. Stephen Hartgen, the former publisher of The Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News. When a fellow representative asked Hartgen why the legislature needed to get involved in "rules within the judicial system,” Hartgen replied that Luster's ruling was "narrow." “This is an area of the law which has evolved to the point where anonymous blog comments are part of our daily life," Russell reports he said. (Here's a copy of his bill, which misstates the name of the politician whose suit inspired it, red meat for an anonymous commenter if I've ever seen it.) (more...)

Seattle Weekly
Seattle Times sports columnist Steve Kelley has standard reasons for retiring at 63: "I find myself at a lot more games thinking 'I've written this story 411 times now. Isn't that enough?'" he tells Seattle Weekly contributor Rick Anderson.

But another complaint puts him squarely in league with former Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette and fans of science writing: ""The reader comments section, it's a free-for-all," Kelley said.

"The level of discourse has become so inane and nasty. And it's not just at the Times, it's ESPN, everywhere - people, anonymous people, take shots at the story, writers, each other. Whatever you've achieved in that story gets drowned out by this chorus of idiots."

Kelley says he won't write a farewell column. His last column will run near the end of January, Anderson says.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
People who read newspaper and magazine reports on science "may be influenced as much by the comments at the end of the story as they are by the report itself," a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers says.

2,000 subjects who read "a balanced news report about nanotechnology" saw either civil or rowdy comments, Mark Johnson reports in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"Disturbingly, readers' interpretations of potential risks associated with the technology described in the news article differed significantly depending only on the tone of the manipulated reader comments posted with the story," wrote authors Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele.

(more...)

Cleveland.com
U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette decided not to run for re-election this year. One thing he won't miss about his old job? Cleveland.com commenters, he tells Plain Dealer reporter Sabrina Eaton.

"What I won't miss are the 20 people in their pajamas who go on Cleveland.com anonymously and feel that the world is just dying for their snarky, stupid comments," LaTourette said during an interview today.

The comments on the piece, which LaTourette agreed would be "bait," are lively. "There are more than 20 people who posted on this Cleveland.com article alone," one wrote.

Related: Yale professor Stephen L. Carter on anonymous commenters (Bloomberg View) | Anonymous comments can be ‘a frothing, bubbling cauldron of insanity’ (Poynter) | Why we’ll never stop struggling over comment sections (Poynter)

Philadelphia Weekly
Not all Philly.com commenters are racist, "but most are," says Tara Murtha. "Calling black people animals, references to monkeys, phrases like 'welcome to the jungle, baby' and 'That’s how it go in da hood' are all standard comments beneath crime stories on Philly.com when the perp is black." But Murtha can't stop reading the atrocious remarks. "Averting my eyes is not my style. I read grand jury reports and listen to police radio."

Philly.com editor Wendy Warren tells Murtha that the anonymous comments problem is enough to drive her “completely insane,” and that she's working on it. A new moderation system will require commenters to sign in through Facebook. Murtha's reaction: "I have to admit part of me is disappointed, even though this is probably a great step for the 99 percent -- the would-be commenters scared off by the elite 1 percent hogging up the bandwidth." | Earlier: News sites using Facebook Comments see higher quality discussions.

Grand Forks Herald | Bismarck Tribune | Bismarck Tribune
John Irby, who is retiring today as Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune editor, told his paper in late August that "I fairly enjoyed it, overall." The 61-year-old newsman was more open about his departure in a column published days later: "I am retiring because I am tired of being the whipping boy, by one and all. My skin has thinned. Life is too short to put up with all the noise." He says he’s not opposed to online comments, but he wants controls to encourage civil discourse. “There’s less tolerance for alternative points of view and that’s what journalism has always been about — about presenting as many different voices as possible. It’s increasingly hard to do that in journalism without getting attacked.” He writes in his farewell column:

Over the years, I have developed a thick skin and defended the First Amendment and freedom of speech. The only censorship I have personally practiced with readers has been libelous statements. As editor, I have supported - and agreed with - other institutional concerns as established by greater employer powers that be. ...

There are no absolute First Amendment or freedom of speech protections for people making online comments. But I will never be able to convince those who disagree, so how about trying to digest this: The old days have passed. Editors are not in charge of, or responsible for, everything.

Columbia Journalism Review
It makes sense to mine the comments and find someone whose writing voice matches that of the site. "Daily Kos embraces this idea fully, hiring almost exclusively from its comments section," writes Alysia Santo. Gawker Media's Nick Denton is known to put commenters on the payroll, too. Ryan Tate was hired after he mocked a job posting on Gawker looking for writers. Richard Lawson posted comments on Gawker as LOLcait while he sold ads for Gawker Media. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could participate in this thing,” he says. “Then I kind of became addicted to it.” Denton eventually moved him to editorial. The Gawker Media boss notes that the comments section design has been changed so that comments are displayed in the same width and in the same font as the body of the article. “We want to treat the best of the comments with the typographic respect that we’d give to an article produced by one of our writers.”

Dashes.com
Anil Dash's message to people who run online communities: Take some responsibility for what you unleash on the world. "When people are saying ruinously cruel things about each other, and you’re the person who made it possible, it’s 100 percent your fault," he writes. We shouldn't just keep shrugging our shoulders and shaking our heads and being disappointed in how terrible our fellow humans are, he adds. If you don't follow these steps, "you’re making the web, and the world, a worse place. And it’s your fault."

* You should have real humans dedicated to monitoring and responding to your community.

* You should have community policies about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior.

* Your site should have accountable identities.

* You should have the technology to easily identify and stop bad behaviors.

* You should make a budget that supports having a good community, or you should find another line of work.

"If your website is full of a**holes, it’s your fault," writes Dash. "And if you have the power to fix it and don’t do something about it, you’re one of them."

Greeley Tribune
Editor Randy Bangert says that during this weeks-long test period, "we're going to monitor the reaction from our web readers, as well as the impact on our web traffic." He explains why it's being done:

I've been troubled for a while at the locker-room humor, name-calling and mean-spiritedness that seems to dominate our anonymous web conversation. Sure, it engages readers in the news, but is it really the kind of engagement we want? ...Why don't we just delete the worst of the comments, you ask? Well, we can. But it takes too much time to monitor.

Other newspapers have recently shut down their comments sections, including Portland Press Herald. Some papers -- like the Janesville (Wis.) Gazette and Minneapolis Star Tribune -- turn off comments for certain types of stories.