Some want it shut down permanently. Others offer ideas for how to make the system better. Either way, readers have given us a lot to think about as we plan next steps during our “cone of silence” hiatus from posting reader comments on Independent stories.
Since taking a hiatus from posting comments on stories last week, we’ve been thinking hard about whether we can revive that part of the site. We’ve been wrestling with whether it’s possible to return the discussion to how it took place the first six years that the Independent was published — as a thoughtful, fun, unpredictable, respectful, civil forum that kept news stories going and made them better; rather than the sewer the discussion became over the past six months.
The hundred-plus comments readers have posted on other web sites and in emails to us have been a big part of the conversation. We’ll have a decision next week; we’re working hard on top-secret plans inside a heavily fortified underground bunker. (Publishing the Independent in what media critic Dan Kennedy in this column called a “cone of silence” has taken some getting used to. Click on the play arrow above for a highlight.)
So while we hone plans for what to do next, we’d like to share some of the most interesting feedback people have contributed about the role of comments in an online local community news website. Extensive examples follow.
A special shout-out to New Haven Register Editor Matt DeRienzo. His provocative blog post sparked some of the best discussion. (It took almost a full week to go off the rails.) And his own updates and responses to other people’s comments showed how this kind of discussion can work best: People taking a strong position, listening to others’ views, then deepening the conversation with something new to say. We don’t agree with everything Matt and his commenters wrote; we listened to it all, and it made us think. The Register and the Independent are pursuing different business models and deeply different approaches to covering New Haven news, which is as it should be. At the same time, I feel we’re on a common quest to figure out new ways to report on the community, in conjunction with the community, in an exciting and challenging new media age. We’re rooting for the success of the Register and its parent company in trying to figure out how to make for-profit chain journalism pay the bills.
The people quoted below were responding to this story we posted about the commenting hiatus and to blog posts elsewhere about that story..
From The Email Bin
Cedar Hill Resident Illustration
I fully support your decision to close the comments section and think that your piece on why you did so is truly excellent. Comments sections everywhere have become a sad state of affairs, and you guys are brave and good to pull the plug.
The argument that your doing so is somehow a form of censorship or an abrogation of free speech is ridiculous. You are a private organization and are allowed to do whatever you want with your comment section, including not have one. And you’ve gone way out of your way to explain yourself in what struck me as a fair, humble, and thoughtful manner. If someone wants to anonymously say horrible, horrible things about people on the internet, he can start his own blog. Nobody will stop him. Good luck finding an audience!
—Brian Slattery
First of all, thank you for your thoughtful, relevant reporting about all things New Haven. Thanks also for your explanation and the careful consideration that you are taking as you decide what to do about comments.
I wanted to give you two pieces of feedback (to add to the virtual pile of letters and feedback you’ve already received. I imagine a scene in the old NHI newsroom that looks like all the letters going in to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.).
First of all, as much as I love and appreciate your reporting and choice of stories, I’m sad to say that reading the Independent has been a less rich experience the past few days than before the moratorium. I miss the comments, especially to hear what brutus 2011 and cedar hill resident have to say. And I even miss Fix the Schools, even though I regularly want to hit him over the head with an empty paper towel roll.
Second of all, if you are able to return the comments, I hope that you will be able to continue to allow for comments to be anonymous. As an NHPS teacher, future NHPS parent, and New Haven citizen, I occasionally feel compelled to throw in my opinion, or to try to provide additional information that is not promoted by my school or the district. However, because I teach in one of our most politicized schools (to put it as nicely as I can), I will admit that I would be afraid of professional retribution if I couldn’t comment anonymously.
I appreciate what a difficult decision you have to consider, while at the same time working to continue to provide the excellent news coverage that we all love and expect from you folks. Thank you for your thoughtful and ethical work, in all its different aspects.
—Cross Teacher
i just read about the comments suspension/hiatus. I support you in what you are doing. I can’t believe the amount of work that has undoubtedly been involved in reading all those comments (some of them unbelievably long and didactic) all this time. and I agree that the tone has been horrible at times — as I recall, especially among residents of the East Rock neighborhood regarding the (racially charged) confrontation between a Worthington Hooker school parent and an Everit Street resident some time ago re: dropping off a kid at school. I wondered how these commenters could slam one another online when they all lived in the same neighborhood. Definitely not a recipe for living harmoniously. Actually, I’ve often wondered if the people who write those thesis-length comments day in and day out have jobs, relationships (other than virtual ones), etc. it’s mind-boggling. Maybe this hiatus will push those folks to go out and talk to people face to face.
—Anne Sommer
I appreciate that you want to keep it above board — but people are filled with emotions and writing is not the worst method of self-expression. I say let it fly. The 1st amendment wins out.
—Fix The Schools
I understand your concern about civility in public discourse. My field in history is replete with examples of how freedom in the marketplace of ideas was an integral and vital part in the foundation of our republic. People became informed about what was really going in their colonial legislatures and in Parliament. Without the colonial newspapers and the broadsides, we might still be part of the British Empire!I post about education and NHPS. I have never posted anything that was not true or even that I have observed first hand. Please listen to what I am about to write very carefully because it is the truth.
The local politics and the organizational politics of NHPS is what drives this whole debate or conversation about the state of our public schools. Education is at best the secondary, probably the tertiary issue with people’s jobs and other financial incentives coming first. Mayor DeStefano is a politician, obviously a successful one. He runs the show and quite frankly, his record is fair game. I am sure he and his managers don’t like transparency. I’m sure if I were him I would not like it either.
Look, do what you will, it is your paper. I, for one, think you should encourage people to go public and let others know what is going on behind the scenes. Should you edit, or censor, those who clearly are coming out of left field? Probably yes. But please do not bow to whatever pressure the politicians and their managers are bringing to bear. This is another time in human history where the democratization of information is taking a quantum leap via the networked computer devices. The other time was when the Gutenberg press was invented. The clergy was the only intermediary between God and the ordinary folks until the printing presses started making information available to more and more people. This is precisely what is transpiring now. Who knows what things will be like when you and I are safely and cozily dead? I tell you what, I bet things are going to be a lot better than they are now. Thank you for providing a forum for those of us who have little to no power.
I hope you will continue to allow us to tell our stories so that the powerful will become humbled to the benefit of us all. Thank you.
—brutus2011
My son and daughter-in-law live in New Haven and mentioned you had suspended your comment portion. I am an editorial columnist with Lancaster Newspapers, and my paper took a similar step a couple of years ago with their Discussion Board (TalkBack).
We solved the problem and reopened the board by requiring a real identity sign-up for user status, which we took the time to confirm (name, address, telephone number, email address). We then allowed those who signed up to adopt anonymous usernames, made clear the new rules of conduct, and adopted a zero tolerance policy toward trolling, flaming, name-calling, foul language, etc. We have been back up and running for a little over a year. We have had to ban users, and had to increase our moderating of the site, but so far it is working out.
Wish you the best of luck as you make decisions, and if I can be of any help to you, don’t hesitate to contact me.
—Carol Petersen
Lancaster, PA
Your column is extremely thoughtful. I know this is a tough area and that there is no easy answer. Katie and I both read the NHI most days, and we have discussed the tone. I think there is something else going on as well.
There are several people who comment on virtually every issue, and their presence may dissuade others. For one thing, too often you can predict the comment before reading it, based on the sender. The “discussion” then becomes a debate between the regulars, taking the same positions they took the day before.
For lurkers like me, it becomes sort of depressing to see so much heat and so little light. Anyway, your are a wonderful community resource, and as difficult as these issues are, the community is lucky to have you trying to figure it out. Good luck.
—Bob Solomon
My wife, Tina, and I would like to thank you for your thoughtful, honest and probing “Time Out” letter today. It eloquently expressed the core of the kind of conversations we have every day about the unfortunate state of civic discourse.
We have admired your work in the Independent and feel very fortunate to have such a resource in our city. Keep up the fantastic reporting that you do.
Netta and Tina Hadari
How about having your readers vet the comments? Invite your readers to rate each comment on how informative it is, and then order the comments below the story with the most “informative” comments at the top. (Over time you could tune the algorithm that defines “informative” based on such factors as percent of readers who found the article informative, number of readers who found it informative, etc. You might even let each reader specify his own ordering algorithm.)
Initially, the comments would be randomly ordered, but as more people read the comments, they would become ordered, with the comments people would most like to read at the top. The comments by trolls would drop to the bottom and anyone who wanted to could ignore them. (You might have to find some way of restricting each computer or IP Address to one rating of a comment to prevent people from gaming the system.) …
But you guys should not have to kill yourselves moderating the comments or waste your limited resources hiring someone to do it.
—Ned Kennington
Durham, NC
This “time out” is thoughtful on your part. I agree that the run of the (now suspended) comments, while technically part of public discourse and participation, rather serve to coarsen and weaken it in actuality.
—Bruce C. Johnson
Back in the old days of the hardcopy NH Independent, a full page was given over to reader letters. As I recall, this was to distinguish us from the Register’s miserly acceptance of reader input, but it was also a desire to bring the readers into the discussion.
At some point it seemed to me that the reader input in our Letters section became neither interesting nor informative, and that what we were doing was turning over a sizable percentage of our column-inches to people who had no interest in adding to the base of knowledge. And we were the ones who built and paid for this forum. We hired people who took their reportorial duties seriously, who wrote well and clearly; we hired skilled staff to produce the paper and make it appealing (Letters section included); we sold ads to build an economic foundation for our survival. The letter-writers took a free ride on the platform we created, with our blessing. I think at one point you even thought that an expanded Letters section would be a good thing — vox populi. We would be the stimulus, the letter contributors the substance.
Fortunately, for space considerations, we had no problem with excising the vast quantities of anti-abortion or anti-mayor or anti-government letters, whittling them down to just a few representative samples. On line, however, space considerations do not apply as strictly and offer no help in how to weed out the nutcase ranters from the thoughtful conversationalists.
My feeling during the old Indy days was that if people wanted a forum for their opinions, rants and cults, they should write them up, print them and distribute them at their own expense. In essence, that was what the Independent was doing with our own opinions and reporting. That we should turn over what we had built to people who had no interest in its survival or sustainability, or who even were hostile to the newspaper, seemed suicidal.
With the many new opportunities (blogs, Facebook, Twitter accounts) for people to express their opinions to a wide audience virtually free of charge, there’s no need for the current Indy to feel like it has to be a locus and platform for everybody with any opinion whatsoever. Platforms on line are cheaper than a dime a dozen. The New Haven Independent has built its own value and its own identity by its reporting and its production values. I think it should be encouraged to protect that identity.
Sometimes interactivity is highly over-rated.
PS: I would however really miss the good commenters.
—Virginia Blaisdell
From The Laurel
(Responses to this item)
I agree with Paul’s decision. Unless someone is serving as an umpire over the comments section allowing people to spew out venom really contributes nothing to the public debate. It’s just a small sampling of extreme opinion that tends to crowd out and scare away others.
The Internet doesn’t have to be the wild west.
—Dean Pagani
I too agree with Paul’s decision. I’ve always read the “letters to the editor” of any newspaper to get a sampling of what readers think (my favorites are always in the NYT and Daily News) but there is always someone who reads them before they are printed.
Contrast that with online comments on most web sites (this one excluded.) Anything goes and no one appears to moderate the discussion at all. It is the equivalent of playing catch with hand grenades after someone pulls all the pins out.
—Steven Kalb on The Laurel
From Ben Berkowitz’s Blog
(Responses to this item)
To be honest, I was happy to see the comment section brought down. I noticed months ago that it was becoming a forum for negativity and slandering. I can’t even remember the last time I received any value out of that comment section.
The problem is that when you open up a public forum with no rules the ones who scream the loudest win. NHI had a number of loudmouth, ignorant regulars who made the comment section totally worthless.
I’m not sure a filter will really solve the issue here. How do you stop someone from commenting on the “great new haven government conspiracy” on every single article? Or when any article that takes place outside someone feels the need to comment on why we don’t have more bike lanes and that we need to be more “pedestrian friendly”…
Overall I don’t think the problem will be solved by an algorithm, it will be solved by readers growing up and learning how to have a conversation with each other… sadly I don’t see that happening with the current set of commenter’s.
—Chris
NHI commenters are a mixed bag. I find some of the comments to be golden, some to be golden hay, and others to be just plain old hay. I find that municipal politics, including school reform, to be terribly important and view the new social media as an important check against corruption. Public officials never tire of obfuscation and information asymmetry. I’d rather wade through 50 bad posts than throw out 1 good one.
—mathteacher950
Nonsense. Paul Bass just effectively flushed the best, most accessible political debate forum in the history of New Haven politics. People could voice ideas without fear of recrimination. NHI cut reader comments because they were either tired of spending resources keeping it civil, hated being corrected, or they are fishing for attention. Exchanging ideas online is, and always has been, the wild west. If you can’t ignore a moronic statement you should probably stay away from the media AND the internet whiteboards, much less both combined. Comments were 75% of why people read articles. When NHI visitor numbers dip and advertisers start to abandon ship, they will bring it back with gusto. Meanwhile, I’ll get my news elsewhere.
—Fairhaven Dave
Funny, ironic or madness that Paul has to post links on his site so that his online community can have a discussion that rightfully should be happening on the pages of the Independent?
I agree with several that the current comment system sucks. Why no threaded comments, and why no trusted user status, such that online back-and-forths could happen over hours and not days?
As a long-time supporter, (yeah, I even subscribe to the NHI at about $200/year, tax deductible btw), I feel completely disrespected as a community member. Part of it is that I like opinions, and opinionated people, and I’m used to diving into the comment section as a way of quickly getting different takes on civic matters. The reporting is usually great, but I like the depth that can be found by listening to fellow community members.
I also think something huge has/would be lost by this abrupt change. It kills off a community of folks who want to challenge, engage, question, elaborate, etc.. Was Dawson just appointed as a police commissioner in a quid pro quo for splintering the black vote? Shouldn’t there be a timely end to the Occupiers camping on the Green? Or what is your favorite dish at Zafra?
Perhaps Paul will see the light. Let’s hope so.
PS — I’d be interested to see how this issue would poll amongst NHI readers. Hint, hint.
—Anderson Scooper
From Media Nation (Dan Kennedy’s blog)
(Responses to this item. Also to an item about this piece Kennedy wrote for the Nieman Journalism Lab.)
I was going to comment on your story on the Nieman site, but comments don’t seem to be permitted. Which I see as a pretty swell idea.
These are tough times for publishers and editors. The business model for journalism is being reinvented. And whatever emerges from the trauma will require more clarity than the profession has yet managed when it comes to defining who the customers are, identifying what they value and determining how to deliver that value at a reasonable profit. Devoting staff time to moderating food fights that can be hosted in thousands of other places on the web ain’t gonna serve the brand of future quality journalism. Rather, continuing to allow the kind of commentary that most publications post immediately below the work of their own staff undermines that brand.
Time to get out of the refereeing business and wash the graffiti off the walls.
—Ben Brown
You know, I kind of love this. Too many venues use the number of comments as a measure of success, and in most of the sites I’ve seen that’s ridiculous. The popular wisdom seems to be that anyone reading — or posting — something on a popular news site or blog should not read the comments.
Generating conversation is easy; generating a meaningful discussion is much harder and takes time and commitment not only from the moderator but also the posters.
—Deb Nam-Krane
If the traffic is driven by the same handful of people trying to one-up each other in the nasty category, it’s not really traffic.
—Mike Benedict
How to drain the cesspool of news-site comments? Mission accomplished.
—Mike Rice
Why this over consideration on what some are calling “civility”? Why this worship of courtesy and politeness as if those qualities are the sine qua non of truth and justice? There is way too much emphasis put on the “peaceful” aspect of protest than on the REASON for the protest itself.
I am forever reminded of MLK’s response to a woman who accused him of disrupting the “peace” in a segregated B’ham, AL with his marches and protest. King responded: “Dear Lady, Peace is not the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Why don’t we focus more on working for justice, than on quieting the voices that speak out and changing their “tone”. This work will ALWAYS bring about tension, on both sides of the debate. Should we really be trying to moderate the anger, hurt, or fears of those who speak out, so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings in the process of reaching for a higher good?
—Rev. Mr. Samuel T. Ross-Lee
I rarely comment on any news site. I agree that many comments can be counterproductive, if not downright offensive. When I see negative comments, I depend on basic reasoning and logic to ignore those posts, and hone in on the comments that are actually productive and contribute to the discourse. I’m surely not the only NHI reader who does this. I don’t complain about negative comments because negativity is an unfortunate human trait,going back to the beginning of time. The NHI readers are, by and far, respectful, intelligent, and care about our city. To reduce the discourse at a time where tensions are heightened feels too much like censorship, in my opinion.
It’s not a great analogy, but it feels like I’m on a school bus, and the two kids next to me started a food fight, and now I have share in their punishment, because I happened to be riding the bus that day. Guilty by association. Guilty because I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Jerry to know my name, my every thought and opinion, and so on. Guilty because I chose to keep my privacy intact and be anonymous.
—Janet Johnson
From Sheila McCreven’s Facebook Page
I say, let the journalists concentrate on their craft. Offload this nonsense to someone with a thick enough skin and tolerance for pain. Or, withdraw completely from being a primary facilitator of discourse and let the backchannels handle it.
—Lou Rinaldi
I tend to agree with Lou. Reporting and community management are very different tasks requiring very different skill sets. There is no reason that comments need to be made on the news site.
I think the discussion on the Independents’ Facebook page illustrates this. It also illustrates the advantage of using tools designed for communities. You need to register here and establish a reputation. There are tools to block people that do not meet your personal requirements about responsible civic engagement. I just blocked one of them.
—Aldon Hynes
I commend Paul’s decision to put the comments on hiatus. I believe everything he says in his explanation, as I have witnessed the volume of posts increase and the decline in civility in the ones that get through. The Indy staff needs a sabbatical while they rethink things. But I hope they come back, because the comments on the news articles are a different kind of civic debate than you get on FB and elsewhere. And despite their difficulties, the Indy comments really have been a model of the form.
—Elia Alexiades
I got the feeling that the issue was not about the journalists getting “abuse”, but more about anonymous posters “abusing” each other, and NHI trying to moderate that. I’d rather they spend the time reporting, personally.
—Kathleen Ayers
From Matt DeRienzo’s Blog
(Responses to this post. Also DeRienzo, who’s pictured here, was quoted saying the following in this Yale Daily News article on the subject: ““The community doesn’t know if you’ve received 50 phone calls when you’ve done something wrong, but they can know that you’ve received 50 comments,” DeRienzo said. “For you to do community journalism — or any journalism at all, really — and not allow readers to comment, to not provide feedback and question you, it is a transparency problem that hurts your credibility.”)
I agree that, in general, newspaper comment sections are where brain cells and common sense go to die. Nonetheless, I think they do fulfill an imporant need for both the community and the newspaper.
I think the key is to require real identities. You aren’t going to stop all of the stupid (haters gonna hate, yo) but it does make one think twice about the potential ramifications of what you are saying. Especially if you live in a small community, as I do, and my neighbors and patients are likely to see my comments in all of their blazing idiocy.
—Dr. Avery Jenkins
I need a hug Paul! I would use my real name if need be. I am going through withdraw! Paul I credit the NHI for some many positive changes in this city. Your paper has united many of us (who would never have crossed paths) to work together on so many things! Your balls, gave us balls! (yes dan I can get a little offensive in my post I have seen a few suggestions on how to make this better. I like the one were you can not post for a week after signing up and your first so many get monitored. (I promise not to use the F word any more !)
—cedarhillresident (aka Rebecca Turcio cuz I have nothing to hide)
It’s not unreasonable; it might very well be unfeasible. Even in its withered state, the staff of the Register is substantially larger than the staff of the Independent. And let’s not overlook the fact that the contrast between the reader discussions in the two publications seems to have played a large role in shaming the Register into cleaning theirs up. Nice job on that, by the way.
The NHI editors get it right far more often than they get it wrong, and when they get it wrong, they fix it quickly. Even the best goalie lets one by every now and then.
There are a bunch of ways around this problem:
1. tiered system. Let people register with real, or at least verifiable identities and then don’t moderate them before they’re posted. I, for one, always post under my own, complete name. One reason is that it tempers that occasional urge towards incivility. One a few (fewer than 5) occasions, I’ve had something excised by the editors – I plead guilty to snarkiness in the 2nd from time to time but I am pretty sure I have never written anything libelous or patently offensive but am willing to take responsibility for anything I say.
2. Go back to the old-fashioned ‘letters’ page. For years newspapers have had no problem requiring people to identify themselves when they wrote in, even if the writer’s name was ‘withheld’.
3. Publish fewer, rather than more, comments. Create a rubric objective standards with identifiable indicators and benchmarks and hold every comment up against that to see if it meets the standard. Is it on topic? Does it contain unverifiable insinuations? Are the concrete assertions supported by facts? Does it contain insulting language? Is it just a repeat of something said earlier? I am writing this on the fly right now but would be happy to be more detailed about what I mean and help create a draft. But maybe the idea is that rather than choosing which comments to reject, the editors choose the ones to accept.
That’s not an exhaustive list, by any means.
Anyway, good luck. It would be a shame to see that forum disappear.
—William Kurtz
In the NHI people have had a chance to make immediate rebuttals and commentaries at the site of the article when the facts are fresh.
Granted, some comments are uselessly nasty, but you’ve always been able to weed them out (including mine). Perhaps it’s time to add staff to take care of the problem. When I posted my previous comment here I also tried to post the same comment on the sites you linked to in the NHI but I wasn’t able to do so because they’re Facebook sites and I’m not a member. I don’t think the social networks are the answer. They may seem public but they seem more like cliques to me.
—Sven Martson
Were there some clear and objective standard applied to Bass’ concerns about comments written in response to NHI articles and in response to other commenters, his goal of moderating the conversation in a fair way might be fulfilled.
His insistence on making this about “tone” is inevitably going to fail. “Tone” is subjective and is biased by the cultural, social, political, and yes, racial perspective of the person(s) judging it.
You can NEVER be fair to all of your readings trying to moderate their “tone”, or your take on their tone. Banning outright profanity or racist, misogynist and homophobic words and rants is one thing, but attempting to regulate ‘tone”? Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.
—The Rev. Mr. Samuel T. Ross-Lee
Paul, I’ve been thinking about this some more, and I don’t think it’s as simple as being accessible to feedback via email and social media, which I’m sure you would be. Two things: I think sites like ours and sites like yours have had/should have a role in providing citizens to organize themselves. So it’s about more than just feedback between them and us, but also communication among each other. Second, feedback without transparency is a lot different than what story comment sections provide. You might be super accessible via email or by phone, but as far as the community knows, you are systematically ignoring strong feedback about one particular area. If it’s out in the open, they can trust your accessibility and response a lot more.
—Matt DeRienzo
I find it surprising that comments are an issue – at the NH Independent, the commenters as a rule have more lucid points than other sites – to see ridiculous and over the top comments, go to most political blogs (left and right). I never saw a problem in the Independent with comments.
—Ralph
We should be grateful that the NHI is in existence. Our commenting, while helpful in some cases, served to feed our ego, let’s face it. We would read the article while thinking what “AWESOME COMMENT can I write to impress my local community and validate my community activism!?!”. Tell me I am wrong about our ego.
The Staff at NHI deserves a break from moderating our Ego…. so they can concentrate on writing good, wholesome, full-spectrum articles. Many communities do not have this luxury: a genuinely decent, effective, online newspaper.
—Grateful
Without the comments section, the NHI and every other publication becomes a linear, one way flat media in a world that is anything but flat or one way. Corporations, the city and state government are all stuffed with paid spokesmen who spend their days massaging the message, denying the undeniable and playing hide and seek with the truth. What readers have is a few moments here and there to read and respond, or not to respond.
The mayor can use his bully pulpit to outright lie, to denigrate taxpayers and bully companies and uses the press when he does. When we viscerally react to that or to some other City Hall or state initiative, we should not need to worry about tone or civility. It’s our opinion and we should be free to speak it provided it adheres to a basic set of rules. The key is to define those rules and let the marketplace govern the site.
I do not think people should have to post using their real names. When we do and when we hold an unpopular opinion or when we are successful enough at communicating it, there can be unwanted retribution.
The answer is somewhere in the middle. Publish the rules, require a sign in with a real email address that is verified. The person behind the name must give up their identity to the publication even if they choose to publish under an alias. Then, just let it rip. I enjoy the comments as much as the articles. Even the horrible comments are amusing. The rest of them are educational, enlightening and at very least, expose to the world a different perspective. I think that’s vitally important to preserve even if it’s uncomfortable, especially in a world where increasingly, those with money, power and connections control so much including the message.
—Noteworthy
As a sometimes a victim of those sometimes unfair, untrue, and vicious slanders, I still believe that the comments section of NHI adds value to the public discourse in New Haven. Though I did sometimes wonder how some comments did get in and stay in.
What was disappointing was that there was no attempt to make the writer prove what they were writing, over and over again, especially when the comments were so slanderous / libelous. I know a lot of other stuff was caught before they went to press, and of course I am thankful for that, but it doesn’t make the pain of seeing the stuff that gets through less hurtful.
Despite all of that, I still believe that the comments section of NHI holds much value, and would gladly continue to take a little (or sometimes a lot) of pain to see the public discourse to continue.
Paul, please make the “no comments” hiatus a short one.
—Darnell
Since the NHI is severely biased, the comments section was the only placed to get both sides of a story.
—Bill
Some Comments Published In The Register’s Vetted Online Comments Section Sunday
(Responses to “Body Found In Mill River”)
just sayin wrote on Feb 12, 2012 12:10 PM:
” NEW HAVEN….…..“look what we got” “
the Grim Ranger wrote on Feb 12, 2012 12:23 PM:
” Some of the living bodies should be removed also. “
(Responses to a story on Whitney Houston’s death)
bo DFN wrote on Feb 12, 2012 8:26 AM:
” one less junkie that working people do not have to support “
bigcheese wrote on Feb 12, 2012 8:29 AM:
” the rev sharpton has already jumped on the bandwagon, he beat jessee jackson again…if you have comcast…remember, they own msnbc where that racist sharpton works, you can cancel your comcast “
REALITY wrote on Feb 12, 2012 10:02 AM:
” Does anybody watch reality television? You all need to watch Whitney and Bobby some time before you start crying over this crackhead “
(Responses to a story on people living in public housing in Ansonia)
mikepc45 wrote on Feb 12, 2012 4:17 PM:
” If you cannot afford children then do not have them. “
let the hot water run wrote on Feb 12, 2012 1:43 PM:
” You only let the water run because YOU are not paying for it. If you were paying the BILL for hot water you would take care of it. “
so true wrote on Feb 12, 2012 8:48 AM:
” If you don’t like public housing…..GET OUT ! go get a job so you can afford YOUR OWN PLACE ! Stop waiting for government hand-outs ! “
taxpayer wrote on Feb 12, 2012 8:49 AM:
” GET A JOB and GET OUT of public housing ! “
to not quick to judge wrote on Feb 12, 2012 1:46 PM:
” If you don’t like it, MOVE no one if forcing anyone to live there. Bridgeport / New Haven / Waterbury / Naugatuck, just move out. “
