Tynan's Anger

Days like these are the worst days to be on the Internet. There are glaring problems with the coverage of Kanye West that I would willingly ignore if I thought they'd ever go away. So allow me to address how this story, like dozens before it, has progressed.

1. Something shocking happens, usually on television. Either we get word of an unexpected death, an exposed nipple, a rapper saying the President doesn't care about black people, or the same rapper saying that someone else should have won an award.
2. The unexpected nature of the moment leads to hysterical coverage by talking heads. This happens regardless of whether or not the hype is manufactured.
3. The Internet responds in appropriately hysterical fashion, leading the story to dominate Google trends.
4. It ends up dominating Google Trends so heavily that even the media outlets with the highest standards feel the need to cover it, whether or not their readership actually cares. This is why the death of Anna Nicole Smith made the front page of the New York Times in 2007, and why The Daily Show, which is allowed to be more honest, is considered to be the most trustworthy news source.
   
5. Everyone ends up pissed off and morose over what is essentially a non-issue, and nothing gets changed.

I'm 23 years old. Is that old enough to make me the only one who still cares about music to remember MTV's long history of manipulating hype? At 23, should I be cynical enough to either dismiss this issue entirely, or cash in on it?

I don't want either case to be true, but unless something is done, this is how the media in the 21st century is going to work.



Controversial MTV VMA moments throughout the years

Labels: google trends, internet hype, kanye west, msm, mtv, new media, rants, video music awards

This is something of a break in Tynan's Anger, I don't usually engage in explicit political arguments here, but this is something I feel very strongly about; it does relate to theater, film, music and new media tangentially, but only as it relates to society at large.

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It is easy to understand the divisiveness that comes with the treatment of pornography in modern society—traditionally, it has been attacked by the Christian pro-right, and those on the left, who support free speech, have opposed it. Lately I have been reading Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, a mainstream treatise on the misappropriation of pornographic imagery as feminism; despite the examples in her book being extreme, blatantly obvious cases of misguided, lazy understanding of ethical principles, it has, like most books on the subject, been described as "highly controversial."

With that in mind, it doesn't surprise me that recent columns on the divisiveness over the use of rape imagery in Observe and Report, as well as Nicholas Kristof's column on the lack of sufficient testing in rape kits (or that the letter column had to have its comments section turned off). When an article shows just how prevalent a problem sexual assault and abuse is in our society, from Hollywood blockbusters to the lack of police support for one of the most frequently committed crimes in our society, it will face an enormous wrath of backlash because it threatens the "very fabric of our society." Arguing a more radical position in the mainstream press is next to impossible.

Nonetheless, in light of the recent verdict to ban hate crimes against homosexuals, there is one practical, achievable law that should be passed that should not be as controversial as it is bound to be: Reviving the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance.

This is not an area where you can trust Wikipedia; considering that the website features 87% male contributors, and the pages of Jenna Jameson and Marilyn Chambers are 10 times more elaborate and developed than those for Betty Friedan or Ellen Willis (or for that matter, Socrates), you'll have to dig deeper. Suffice to say, here's basic history:

In the 1980s, various local legislators attempted to pass laws preventing that would allow women who were sexually abused, assaulted, or raped in pornographic films to seek civil legislation against pornography producers. The legislature was in part prompted by the the 1980 memoir Ordeal by Linda Boreman, star of the industry-defining film Deep Throat, published a memoir claiming several cases of being raped, physically assaulted, and violently pressured to film scenes against her will. Laws supporting legal recourse for victims of sex crimes in the porn industry were passed in various local governments, including nearly universal support whenever the issue was addressed by a public ordinance.

Nonetheless, the courts repeatedly turned down the law; in the first case, Minneapolis Mayor Donald Fraser vetoed the bill, claiming that the city did not have the budget for a lengthy, expensive Supreme Court case, but also because he disagreed with it on his own views (the next mayor of Minneapolis was Sharon Sayles Belton, the city's first female and African-American mayor). With obscenity still an issue of contention for free speech advocates in the federal court system, many feminists debated whether it would be more effective to argue legally for reform or whether to proceed through education and social action. The movement for the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance largely died down in 1992 after the Canadian Supreme Court passed R. vs Butler, a bill that included many of the arguments of the Ordinance into its definition of obscenity—by turning rape in the porn industry in the free speech issue, and by incorporating it into a larger slippery slope argument, the issue of sex abuse in the porn industry became an issue no one on the left wanted to touch.

I thought of the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance a lot when watching yesterday's coverage of the Hate Crime Legislation. Though it passed with flying colors, an effort that would have seem impossible 25 years ago, it seems ludicrous today to think that even 175 in the House would vote against it. The argument against used a similar free speech and slippery slope line of reasoning that plagued the APCRO 20 years ago. Jon Stewart noted, "you can still hate them, but you don't get to hit them," and even conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, reflecting on the diminishing power of the far-right Republicans, noted, "Who wants to join forces with someone who would use the word 'hoax' in regard to Shepard's murder 'that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these [hate crime] bills'?"

So public opinion has certainly changed on hate crimes, but it has not on the serious issue in terms of rape in pornography. Furthermore, with obscenity having not been a contentious legal issue for almost two decades, it seems that there should be nothing stopping those on the left from pushing the case. So why the lack of activism? It could be the education and public discourse issues that many feminists advocated in the 1980s. The Matthew Shephard case was a national story that dominated cable and evening news, was turned into an award winning play and an award-winning television film. The most public argument against rape in the porn industry, which for all we know happens nearly every day, comes on Maria Bamford's 30-minute Comedy Central Presents special, and backhandedly in Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. Meanwhile, we are deluded with dozens of films that legitimatize and, in many, cases blatantly advocate the sex industry while ignoring this issue; many of which, it should be noted, are broadcast on HBO, the very same network that broadcast The Laramie Project.

Nonetheless, the argument is basically the same in both cases; in both hate crime law and anti-rape in pornography law, free speech would not be affected. Anti-gay rights advocates could still write incendiary columns, and pornography and its advocates could still be published freely. What would be disallowed, however, would be to commit violent acts of assault or rape against homosexuals or those who work in porn.

To that end, the term "Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance" is probably outdated, as it was conceived in a larger cultural framework that came at a time when radical feminism was not seen as a fringe movement and when civil rights. When framed as a law emphasizes providing legal opportunities for women who are raped as part of the sex industry, as opposed to a rebuke on the entire industry, it would seem ridiculous to most Americans to oppose such a law.

Of course, the prevalence of those who argue against prosecuting rape of any kind is often ignored. The opposition to all forms of sexual assault law, often using the label Men's Rights Activists, is growing strongly, and its presence is especially strong on the Internet. You can argue that mainstream media personalities like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh share most MRA views, and Limbaugh, of course, coined the now-mainstream term "feminazi." I imagine I will receive some nasty comments for this blog post, none of which I will censor or even respond to.

Because of the lack of information as well as the rise in MRA attack in blog comments, daily conversation, and mainstream press, arguing to regulate rape in porn is something few outside the feminist blogosphere would think to address publicly. Nonetheless, that silence is precisely the problem; my only regret is not being able to post this in a larger venue. From the MRA point of view, the recent Hate Crimes legislation is just as crucially related to feminism as it is from the feminist point of view. The Men's Rights Activist blog Men's News Daily argued that it is impossible to support gay rights without being a part of the "feminist power agenda." That, to me, should close the mainstream book on the real agenda behind MRA. That should be a good sign of the kind of person who argues against hate crimes or rape legislation.

Allow me to break down the possible arguments against regulating rape in porn (which seems ridiculous to write in a sentence, but it needs to be done). First off, for those who oppose pornography in any way shape or form, I understand that point of view, and I am not throwing out the issue outright. However, this is a clear, tangible goal that was a legitimate public social issue 20 years ago, and that, with more public awareness, has the potential to be achieved again due to changes in the legislation and public opinion of related cases.

Now for much the more numerous other side: that it would be impossible to produce porn for the fear of faulty civil rape allegations. The argument here would be that with the bloated nature of the civil courts,and considering given the lack of other opportunities and personality types of those who work in pornography, it would significantly raise the risk of false, completely baseless charges against certain people who would have their reputations tarnished forever. In fact, the faulty charges of the Kobe Bryant and Duke Lacrosse Team Cases factored heavily into the rise of the organized MRA movement, and resulted in spikes in the sales of Kobe and Duke Lacrosse merchandise (though it's not like the ideas behind MRA were created by those cases).

First off, I will say this: it's not like those in the porn industry have a particularly untainted reputation to begin with. The social stigma against those in the porn industry is already well established both on the left and the right. The social stigma of those who work in porn may only be rivaled by those who go into the sex industry and later regret the decision and speak out against it. Never mind the fact that Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in Roe v. Wade, was turned into a national icon by far-right pro-life activists when she later recanted her support for abortion rights.

Secondly, behind the MRA-style argument against APCRO is the assumption, in some cases implicit, in some cases explicit, that rape is an essential part of pornography. This is an argument that the majority of society would find despicable, but it is one likely to be stopped quickly because its an immensely controversial viewpoint with questionable validity; we can never really know how many cases of sex in pornography would be legally defined as rape, especially now, with the rise of amateur, non-professional pornography. Of course, we get significantly factually-challenged far-right opinions expressed in the mainstream press all the time as legitimate, but for a radical feminist position, it requires absolute, irrefutable accuracy to be mentioned without a wave of backlash.

Nonetheless, the general public support against actual instance of rape is overwhelming, even if the actual public discourse on rape is skewed, biased, and uninformed. Just as public opinion is enormously opposed to those who think violent attacks against those based on race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation, those who would be against rape in principle in any form, including the porn industry, would be largely negative, perhaps even on the Internet, where opinion is skewed in particular on this issue.

For those who see it as a free speech issue; I hope I have addressed above why it is most definitely not a free speech issue. For a good summary of recent obscenity legislation, I would recommend checking out this summary from the University of Missouri-Kansas City website. Basically, it has become such an expensive and convoluted to prosecute an obscenity case against pornography when the First Amendment is involved, that most don't even try unless it involves child pornography. The argument here has nothing to do with obscenity, and recent rulings in hate crime law should only support that cause.

Lastly, here's a question I will admittedly argue from a patriarchal viewpoint; as a trigger warning, I would recommend those who reject that viewpoint to ignore this next section:

One more question remains: how does the current, unregulated form of the pornography industry affect the experience of watching porn? As a mainstream, socially-conscious liberal, would watching porn while knowing that no matter how enthusiastic a woman seemed on screen, there was a higher than you'd like to think chance she was being raped in this footage, would you be able to get off as effectively? If, on the other hand, there was a law that let the mainstream liberal presume the women in the video was, at the very least legally protected against being raped in a porn video, wouldn't you be able to put your conscience aside more easily when your brain is really not the organ in focus at the moment?

Or, on the other hand is the fact that a woman could be raped a turn-on, even implicitly? Would someone who would never watch self-described rape pornography still find something tantalizing in the idea that they could be watching woman being raped? This is not an "all sex is rape," "all porn is rape," or a "rape is the ultimate turn-on argument;" it's the notion that men who in theory oppose rape could be unconsciously supporting and possibly even glorifying it to themselves in practice.

And of course, there are the millions upon millions of men, perhaps even the majority, who make no objection to the fact that they see the possibility and actuality of rape in pornography exciting. That voice is too loud on the Internet to examine further.

Labels: Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance, Crime, feminism, male rights activists, msm, Pornography, rape allegations, sexism, Sexual abuse, Sexual assault

Let's stop calling Jose Canseco a "whistleblower." The term whistleblower implies someone courageously sacrificed one's own well-being and risked his or her safety, way of life, and even death to expose a hidden, dark secret. Jeffrey Wigand was a whistleblower, as was "Deep Throat" W. Mark Felt. Canseco did not deny his steroid use, and went on to accuse just about every prominent MLB player of the era of using it too, whether or not he had facts. His motivations were clearly for self-gain: book sales, movie deals, speaking contracts, all of which he shamelessly demanded with conditions and asking prices beyond all reason. In fact, he has been repeatedly accused of extorting players for money to withhold their names.

So let's see, we have a manipulative self-aggrandizing public figure taking advantage of a witch-hunt like phenomenon where even an accusation of guilt is enough to taint your professional career forever. Does this sound familiar? It should, because it eerily parallels arguably the 20th century's most shameful act of American thought-policing.

Jose Canseco is to American baseball players from the 1990s and 2000s what Joe McCarthy was to American liberals from the 1930s, '40s and '50s. If someone had any allegiances to the Communist party, its sympathizers, or its ideology at any point, regardless of what they felt in the 1950s, they were seen as tainted from any job or achievement past, present, or future. And all McCarthy had to do was threaten someone to get people to sell their beliefs or actions short out of fear.

Less players are willing to cave to Canseco, because he's more interested in their money than anything political. In the case of the recent Alex Rodriguez scandal, it became personal due to his accusation of A-Rod hitting on his wife (from what we know about A-Rod, this is probably true as well). But even before Roger Clemens said it, we all know it's pretty damn impossible to prove a negative. We know this because that statement was heard widely in the era of blacklisting and McCarthy. But the people who are supposed to be fighting, strong-arming, and bullying — the media — are in fact giving Canseco more respect than anyone, simply because he does the work and says the things that they can't say without losing respect of the locker room.

There a two major differences between Canseco and McCarthy. The first, which probably has Canseco fare favorably to McCarthy, is that drug use was, in fact, so widespread in the 90s, that he's going to be right more often than he is wrong. Do we know that Canseco knew definitively that A-Rod used steroids? No. But we wouldn't have been that surprised if it was revealed, whether or not Canseco told us first. Even if he has no basis for what he's accusing a player of, he's more likely to be right about a guy with unnaturally huge muscles using steroids than an avowed leftist in the 1930s being a secret Communist. The second difference, which arguably makes Canseco worse than McCarthy, is that he was a rampant steroid user as well. McCarthy, was never a communist, and he at least somewhere, sometime, maybe early on, sincerely believed that fighting Communism was a good thing.

I'm much more likely to doubt that Jose Canseco has ethics on steroids far beyond how he could exploit it. He was as guilty, in fact much more so, than any athlete who draws the ire of sports columnists. Yet, the media still tentatively supports him. Another thing to note is that in the 1950s, journalists themselves risked facing McCarthy's wrath if they called him out for witch-hunting. In this age the media would risk nothing by calling out Canseco. What they do risk is a storyline that they themselves find interesting, and talk show radio callers feel interesting, but something virtually no one else is quite as interested in.

Baseball journalists care a lot more about players using steroids than actual fans do, and when they look to fans to express the same level of rage, they get pretty desperate. For instance, whenever fans of opposing teams would have Barry Bonds asterisk balls played on the road, it was all over ESPN. Journalists saw that as signs that they were vindicated in their actions. They seem to be forgetting that fans of one team will make fun of an opposing player in whatever way they can. Fans made fun of Josh Hamilton and Darryl Strawberry for using drugs, David Justice for beating Halle Berry, and A-Rod for for cheating on his wife. That's not a vindication of anything other than athletes being d-bags and fans being unoriginal.

Of course, McCarthy built his public presence with his finger-pointing, while Canseco built it 20 years before the finger pointing with dingers. Keep in mind that Canseco, who always had a reputation of being a jerk and who baseball writers previously had generally despised, had very little to lose in shooting his mouth off. He wasn't going to make the Hall of Fame—in fact, even after Congress used him as a major reliable source in pounding McGwire's testimony, McGwire still got exponentially more votes than Canseco in the Hall of Fame ballot (Canseco was eliminated after getting a grand total of 6 votes in his first year of eligibility).

Without any semblance of a career to maintain, Canseco realized that his only way to stay relevant (translation: cold hard cash) was to shoot his mouth off, as loudly and shamelessly as possible. This was not a difficult thing for Canseco to accomplish. Of course, Canseco may be the prime reason why his former Bash Brother will in all likelihood not make the Hall. Furthermore, after the Mitchell Report and all the other stars found guilty, Canseco would probably get more votes now if he was still eligible; you can almost imagine a twisted scenario where he gets one of those "contributions to the game" Hall of Fame inductions before Buck O'Neill. Originally, Canseco claimed he was getting unfairly targeted solely as a steroid user, as opposed to the fan friendly image of other juicers like McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. But at this point, there's no balance to Canseco's justice: all he can do is further contribute to keeping modern day stars out of the Hall of Fame.

What's more appalling is when a dangerous, self-aggrandizing, shameless former steroid abuser calls out his former colleagues on a crime he committed, and does it for personal gain more than any sense of morality or regret. Mark McGwire is not going to make the Hall of Fame because he didn't "name names," including his own. And he was seen as a coward? Whether or not they pay off Canseco, players have to live in fear of drawing the ire of Canseco, no matter how spurious those accusations may be. The simple answer is "don't do steroids." But like McCarthy, players are being called out based on previous behavior. If they ever used steroids, their entire career is tainted, no matter what achievement they accomplished with or without steroids. Their chances of getting a future job, getting into the Hall of Fame, or any of the benefits of being famous for your ability is tainted by a mere whiff of suspicion. That's not whistleblowing. That's McCarthyism. Period.

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This post was originally published for Blogcritics.

Labels: accusations, alex rodriguez, bad baseball journalism, baseball, book deals, jose canseco, joseph mccarthy, Major League Baseball, manipulation, mccarthyism, mlb, msm, steroids

• Image by abbyladybug via FlickrHow to run a Web 2.0 campaign [Herald-Tribune]
• Maybe it's good we lost in 2004 [Mother Jones]
• What we need for the Obama presidency: more hope, less Keynes [Forbes]
• What will the media do now? Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. [Gawker]
• Satire just became a much harder job [Salon]
• The most eloquent statement on the victory, by Ezra Klein [American Prospect]
  

Labels: barack obama, ezra klein, gawker, john mccain, layoffs, Mother Jones, msm, politics, satire, Web 2.0

Let's hope she's resurrected with one of the many new media jobs she will be offered.

In case you haven't been following the story, Alana Taylor has been at the center of a prime recent controversy that has exposed the generational divide between purveyors of old and new media. Alana is a junior at NYU journalism school and blogger on the social media blog Mashable. She posted on PBS's MediaShift blog about how much old media was still left in her supposed New Media class, and how she was shocked to be the only blogger in the class. When I first read the post, I find it to be prescient and entirely benign. She didn't swear at her professor, nor did she even mention the professor by name. Nonetheless, a relatively massive controversy ensued. She was banned from blogging on the class by her professor, and received tons of hate mail (probably by the same people who lambaste the internet for allowing more hateful rhetoric). She also received a heroine's welcome among some newer media types, and was offered multiple media jobs in a time when few are being offered to anyone.

Some will inevitably see this as social climbing, but as a member of Taylor's generation, I'm pretty sure Taylor didn't write the post to start controversy. She probably simply meant to be informative, as the post was to eyes tuned into this discussion. Instead, the controversy was started by the old media types who hate this sort of thing. Now, she's a hero of the blogosphere, and her point has been proven. As print media journalists look to be collecting welfare checks sooner or later, Taylor already has them beat in the job search.

I was surprised, however, to find that the forum posts on Mediabistro were almost unilaterally against Taylor. I figured on an internet forum there would be at some supporting her, but the forums on Mediabistro are counterintuitiely dominated by old media types. The paranoid in me was wondering whether this was a Lee Siegel situation; I didn't post that after seeing that the posters all had multiple posts under their belts (It would have just validated the old media types, anyway.) Here's what I did end up saying:

I personally am shocked by the uniformity of the response on this discussion board, and this uniformity seems completely out of character for a website dedicated seriously thinking about the media. I am a member Taylor's generation (and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who's posted so far who is), and from my perspective, what she has done is completely innocuous to the NYU teacher and a fair assessment of where j-school stands.

I was seriously considering J-School after graduation, but everyone who I spoke to said don't go. Most of the responses I got not only mentioned the lack of career doors that J-School would open, but also made the point that going to J-school may actually hurt me in the media job hunt, as publications would see me as a privileged kid looking to pay for media connections.

As someone who's just entered the media profession, one of my greatest strengths is my savviness with new media (I'm on at least 10 social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Digg), and that in part is what landed me my first job. At the same time, there are some older editors who actively hate any and all new media, and would not hire me at all even though they probably need someone like me to stay solvent over the next two years.

The single biggest generational gap between my generation and the ones before me is what we consider private information. Blogging on the details of a class seems completely innocent to people under the age of 25, as would posting a picture of a social gathering on Facebook or publicly blogging about personal relationships (even if in vague terms). To those over 40, however, blogging about the details of the class is an incredibly invasive and outrageous act, which explains most of the subsequent controversy. I am as baffled as to why there is a controversy as I'm sure older j-school professors would be baffled as to why I don't understand.

At the same time, I think Taylor was right to point out just how overhyped our generation's supposed investment in media can be. The vast majority of my friends are not on twitter, and a significant number haven't updated their Facebook profiles in months or years (and I'm probably more likely to have friends who twitter, considering that I flock to people interested in the media). I agree that people need to know how to write, and I've worked hard to keep up my grammar and clarity in an age of instant publishing. But there is a difference between good blogging and good newspaper and magazine writing, and the differences between them become especially pronounced over the generational divide. That there still exists an institution where people pay upwards of $40,000 a year to become educated on media practices that are at least 20 years out of date is particularly pathetic, especially considering that most of the old fogeys who rigidly adhere to those practices will be out of a job soon.

Of course, I started that post with a minor grammar mistake (I forgot commas, boo hoo), so some posters will dismiss me outright. Hopefully enough people will get the point.

Mashable has an excellent (if biased) summary of the brou-ha-ha.

Labels: alana taylor, journalism school, msm, new media, nyu, privacy, wtf

Going off the deep end on bloggers is one thing. Being misogynistic while doing so? Stay classy, Houston Chronicle.

Labels: bad sports journalism, blogs, houston chronicle, misogyny, msm, richard justice

When a new medium emerges and we don't know how to deal with it, it's helpful to compare it to the older media it is updating or replacing. Blog comments are as controversial of a new medium as we've seen since the emergence of the Internet. The above On The Media NPR segment addressed the obscenity, racism and hatefulness that can be found on Internet comments and Internet forums. But what purpose do comments serve, when compared with other media of the past?

Only a truly naive person could argue that the Internet has made us more hateful. It's certainly made it easier to be hateful, and convenience has a long history of advancing hate speech. But hate goes to a much deeper part of the human psyche than a place that can be touched by 10-15 years of technology. Furthermore, hateful responses to published material is not a new phenomenon. It's best to think of Internet comments are as unregulated, uncensored letters to the editor.

Letters to the editor have been a part of the American media since there's been an American media; you could argue that the Federalist Papers were letters to the editor. But anyone who's worked on a paper can tell you that there are dozens of crazed, hateful screeds written all the time that don't get published. For every letter The New York Times has ever published, there are at least 20 letters that are not put in print, and most of them don't have a chance of making it to paper because of their offensiveness. If blog posts are published materials just like newspaper articles, they can inspire the same heated, infuriated responses that have always existed. The Internet doesn't encourage this kind of speech any more than angry letters to the editor do.

What the Internet has done is make it much easier to write a letter to the editor, and made it exponentially easier to have that letter made public. Most blogs, and even most print publications that allow online comments, don't try to restrict what commenters say. Anyone can post whatever they want, and as long as they can prove they're not a spam bot, it will be published. Let's compare that to what a person who wished to comment on an newspaper or magazine article would have to do before. The New York Times lists the following guidelines to letters to the editor:

Letters to the editor should only be sent to The Times, and not to other publications. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters.
Letters for publication should be no longer than 150 words, must refer to an article that has appeared within the last seven days, and must include the writer's address and phone numbers. No attachments, please.
We regret we cannot return or acknowledge unpublished letters. Writers of those letters selected for publication will be notified within a week. Letters may be shortened for space requirements.

Today, the Times also has tips to getting your letter published, the emails of the editors, and phone numbers to call. Up until a few years ago, that wouldn't be there. The only way to know where to send a letter would be one sentence in the masthead of a paper. Then you had to follow those guidelines, use your own paper and ink, lick the stamp, pay postage and go outside to stick the letter in a mailbox. All those steps have now been eliminated. The Internet has democratized the stupid, hateful speech writing process, just like it has democratized everything else in the media. Democracy, as I think we can all attest, doesn't make people smarter.

What's particularly frustrating is that newspaper journalists get up in arms over Internet comments. They're stressing over the same kind of response that they throw in the trash in the newsroom. Journalists are already supposed to have thick skin, but with the Internet, they just need to add extra layer or two.

The purpose of comments differ depending on the type of publication. If you're a small blog like this one, comments are the best way to create discussion and gain attention to your site. If you're the website of a major paper, I'd advocate treating online comments like letters to the editor and heavily regulate it. It's true that people will complain that you are stifling free speech. Just like everyone who hasn't gotten their letter published in a paper thinks their opinion is being stifled.

Labels: internet comments, msm, new media, npr