Earlier quoted context omitted.
The New York Times made a pretty good model. 1) Promote and recognize good comments 2) Remove offensive or non-constructive ones This form of hand curiation sets down rules and expectations which the community at large than reaches for. If you dont set down rules of course your discussion forums will disolve into petty nonsense. The loudest, dumbest voice always wins in a shouting match merely by employing a denial-o…
Unfortunately our editor's response to everything is "it's a staffing problem." Our newsroom, if you want to call it that, spends most of the day re-writing (fluffing) press releases to get a paper out the next day. Corporate has our system lock down, we don't have access to our database tables and responses to feature requests, like comment promotion, are usually..."We'll bring that up in a meeting." In my opinion p…
I was not going to change the editors mind who believed IT took care of itself and most of it was just 'magic' -- that outsourcing tech to a low-cost vendor who provided no follow up support or update would ultimately doom the product -- and that ultimately the product of 'News' was more about the medium of tech than the news itself.
If they can't read it, you aren't making money. I was tired of skeptical questions and blank stares from managing editors who laughed at the idea of 'reading news on your phone' and thought 'code monkeys' didn't really understand the news and should stay in the basement while the experienced journalists did the real work.
I've consulted National Geographic, CNN, the New York Times, and several others about their digital futures and I have never met clients that were so stubborn, confused, and self-desceptive in my life. The one that took the cake of course was National Geographic, who refused to believe that video would supplant a large portion of their photographic work in the coming years. They also stated that they did not believe people would want to consume 'low resolution' images on a screen compared to their quality printing process.
The NYT built my idea, which became TimesCast -- kudos for that. And CNN generally stays on top of most things from an IT perspective.