Adding Civil Discourse to Newspaper Commenting - A Call to Action

As an entrepreneur with considerable success over the last 20 years I've been featured in the local newspapers in the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton, Pennsylvania area more than almost anyone outside of politicians and high profile civic leaders. I'm incredibly grateful for the overwhelmingly positive news written by numerous journalists that have covered stories ranging from my brother Rick and I taking our gourmet food product "Pepper Jam" on QVC to selling my digital marketing company and affiliate network to eBay. There have been many stories since.

About 5-8 years ago, as local news became more digital, newspapers experimented with various strategies to compete with one another (in the case of my two newspaper town) and with pure digital marketing companies. Truth is - local advertising dollars began a trend that hasn't stopped to diversification, which includes an increasing amount of money spent on digital advertising platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. The newspapers have had to compete to the best of their ability.

Among the "experiments" that local newspapers have leveraged to generate page views and otherwise sell online advertising is online commenting on print news articles. The great thing about "online commenting" is that the conversation on any local news article is extended beyond yesterday's news. This is a good thing. The challenge for the newspapers - particularly in my home town of Wilkes-Barre / Scranton, PA is twofold. One - the papers allow for anyone willing to sign up for an account on Disqus to create a fake alias to post. Fake aliases are not required - you can use your own identity - but the majority of people using the Disqus product create fake names ranging from Donald Duck to Disgruntled_Tax_Payer to post comments. Fake identities breed extremist viewpoints and lead to emotionally driven comments that are often harassing, terribly negative without factual justification, and often outrageous claims. Second - the papers have promised moderation, but fail to provide adequate levels of moderation that would allow for adherence to reasonable terms and conditions around civil discourse.

So I took action. Most recently I was on the cover of both local newspapers in my town since I acquired two buildings in a prominent area of the Downtown and intend to turn the mini campus technology business accelerator. Here's a link to my project featured on the Times Leader website. The action I took was a "Call to Action" for the local newspapers in my town to address concerns I and other leaders had around (1) use of fake aliases to post comments that harass, assault, and otherwise spew negativity and (2) lack of adequate comment moderation. I posted the Times Leader article because they took swift action in response to my request that also quickly and universally got the support of other prominent community leaders. The Citizen's Voice (owned by Times Shamrock Communications) has yet to formally respond, but I hold out hope that they will respond and follow the lead of other progressive newspapers that realize modernity requires changes.

Case in point, the Wall Street Journal announced its own strategy as it relates to creating more effective discourse around newspaper articles. In my opinion, the TIME IS NOW for my local newspapers and those in other areas of the Country to address these concerns and elevate the discourse of the conversations that are taking place in our communities based on local, regional, and National news.

Here's the official communication from the Wall Street journal:

Elevating Our Discourse

Dear Kristopher,

Our readers like active engagement with the news. We have heard from you that you strongly desire a place to read a variety of audience perspectives, that you want posts that are thoughtful and, also, that you would like an environment in which you feel comfortable to share your own insights. In interviews and surveys of our membership and the broader public, people say they would like to contribute to audience conversations on our web site but that they have, over time, become turned off by the growing toxicity that is rampant all over the Internet.

We want our web site to lead the way in pushing for elevated discourse. This week, we are introducing initial steps that will pave the way for audience conversations that more of you may be interested in reading and perhaps in contributing to. We will have more steps and new features in coming months. We welcome your feedback and you can write me at the below email address.

News thrives when it lives amid a conversation between journalists and the public, and amid conversations among readers themselves.

Thank you for feedback and hope you will join more of our conversations on WSJ.com.

Matt Murray 

Editor in Chief 

[email protected]

The Five Most Significant Changes:

Only WSJ members can participate

To keep discussions free of objectionable content streaming in from outside the WSJ community, the audience conversation feature will now be an exclusive benefit for our members.

Audience Conversations will only be available on certain articles and for a set amount of time

To give both our members and WSJ editors the ability to focus on the day’s top stories, we will be limiting the number of open articles and closing discussions after 48 hours. You will be able to find articles with open conversations in a featured box on the bottom of all articles on our site.

We’ve strengthened our moderation and will highlight exemplary responses

We’ve improved our moderation process to better enforce existing policies. We have hired additional journalists to engage with the Audience Conversation to enhance the free expression of ideas and foster civility in our community. Thoughtful postings will be regularly selected and highlighted within stories to further amplify your voices.

All open articles will include a question

To facilitate thoughtful and meaningful discourse, a WSJ reporter will initiate the discussion with a question. This will help keep comments on point and give members the ability to interact with our journalists.

We've set up an email alert system

We are committed to transparency and created a system to immediately notify members when comments are approved or rejected. For more information, you can read our updated 

Community Rules and FAQs (https://click.email.dowjones.com/…)