Now that I’m publisher, people are asking me how I like the job and how it’s different from being editor.
I like it a lot, but it’s very different.
Being editor was like being Mike Holmgren, the coach of the Seahawks, assuming they played every day of the year. You’re working directly with the players and their different skills and personalities, in a team environment, confronting and dealing with real-time problems against competitors and the clock, seeing who can do the best job RIGHT NOW.
Being publisher is like being Tim Ruskell, the general manager of the Seahawks. The most important job is guaranteeing a good on-field product, so he’s working closely with the coach. But his mind is also on everything else (ticket prices, the game-day stadium experience for the fan, player salaries, revenues from TV and tickets and souvenirs, the latest injury, the next draft or trade), and thinking as much about next year as the next game.
As I write in future weeks I’ll try to let you in on some of the issues we’re dealing with across the departments at the paper, as we seek to keep it vibrant and meaningful to readers and advertisers.
One of the problems I’m working on with Karen Peterson, who is executive editor and the person who runs the newsroom, is what to do about people who post abusive comments on stories or blog posts on our Web site.
As we built thenewstribune.com and our other Web sites, we imagined readers sharing new information with others through comments they could post on stories or blogs. We had in mind comments that added personal insights to the site, and we thought readers would engage in thoughtful debate with others.
We also thought that reporters and editors would get valuable ideas for follow-up stories, and see new lines of inquiry or additional facts they hadn’t uncovered initially.
Some of that has happened.
But some comment strings are cesspools of vitriol.
Problem comments show up on stories that mention race. Racists can’t resist the chance to share their ignorance and hatred.
Or run a story on any local politician of note, and whatever group that despises that person the most will gang up to smother any civil discourse with slander and bluster, untainted by fact or reason.
Some commenters are simply jerks.
Recently the newsroom ran an essay on our weekly Show&Tell page by a fourth-grader suggesting that students use up their old school supplies before buying new ones each year.
Reporter Debby Abe tells what happened next: “A reader wrote a diatribe in the comment section about how this was another stupid ‘green’ idea promoted by The News Tribune that would accomplish nothing while China was dumping oceans of raw sewage, etc. The commenter used the student’s name and said: ‘V------- P-------, you are an IDIOT.”
Debby said the girl’s mother called and said the student cried when she saw the comment. We removed the comment. Then the commenter left another post, stating the hope that the student would be hit by a bus. We removed that one, too.
Readers don’t like nasty, uncontrolled comments.
“I stopped commenting on the boards (all but very rarely) a long time ago,” one reader wrote recently “It’s a nasty, negative troll fest and not worth the time or frustration.”
“So what should we do?” ask Mark Briggs, the newsroom’s online editor. “Make all comments go through a review before they are approved? Turn off comments and just make the problem go away? Or continue to allow an open forum and hope the good will shout out the bad?
“My preference is to redouble our efforts to the care and feeding (and discipline) of this dynamic community.”
To that end we’re installing new software this fall from an outfit called Pluck. It’s designed to help the newsroom solicit and better manage more comment and content from readers.
The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today use Pluck to create topic discussion groups, and to solicit and monitor comments on news stories and blogs.
The site allows readers to report problems and to rate comments, which will help us better monitor and improve the comments portion of our Web site.
So, please comment. But keep it clean, and report abusers.
Dave Zeeck: 253-597-8554
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