New Mex cuts down on the chatter.
The online readers of the Santa Fe New Mexican once again have a place to chat. Sort of.
After a brief but much ballyhooed suspension of the daily paper's online comments section, Oct. 23 marked the first day of a new system designed to better monitor readers' opinions. The original shutdown occurred Oct. 6 in response to comments on a story about the beating of Paige McKenzie, a spokeswoman for Republican gubernatorial candidate John Dendahl.
"People were going at each other, and so the decision was made to stop the comments," New Mexican General Manager Ty Ransdell says. "It was made by [Publisher] Robin Martin and myself."
According to New Mexican Web Publisher Michael Odza, in the four years since it began, the comments section has grown tremendously. Originally, Odza and his department monitored the comments themselves. This past summer, the paper introduced an automated system.
The reaction to the McKenzie story, however, led to the conclusion that the system needed tweaking, which led to the temporary shutdown. That shutdown itself prompted some commentary. Even Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano devoted his Oct. 16 blog entry to the issue and conceded that he sometimes likes to comment on the New Mexican's site as well.
"Sometimes, more people read the comments than comment themselves," Odza, who notes that there were 10,000 comments in September, says.
The New Mexican is not alone in its dilemma. The paper's own Oct. 22 story told the tale of numerous publications-from the Washington Post to the Palatka Daily News in Florida-that have put the kibosh on Web comment sections.
"I think the conundrum that news people are facing is how do you incorporate the open architecture of the Web, that allows anybody to comment and publish and broadens the public forum surrounding the news, while maintaining the values that journalists keep close," Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington, DC-based think tank, says. "Those values involve a civilized debate where rumor and gossip and character assassination are not allowed."
The New Mexican has now devised a three-tiered plan they believe restores the balance. Now, readers can comment on certain stories (roughly four to seven per day), but only after their comments are reviewed by the Web department. At certain hours during the day, readers will also be allowed to comment on every story posted on the paper's Web site; Web staff will also review those comments. If readers still aren't satisfied, they can comment freely through a separate chat room created by the New Mexican (
).
Regardless of the new, more rigid oversight, New Mexican Web Editor Stefan Dill says keyboard-happy locals are just pleased they can comment once again.
Says Dill: "I think people on the whole are glad. I've had some conversations with some of our regular posters, and so far things are going pretty well."
