Today’s the last day to put your impressions on NPR’s website before they shut down the commenting system and delete all previous audience input from their page.
For years NPR’s comment sections have suffered from the inflammatory and aggressive language that has become par for the course on public web forums.
The move to disable comments comes now because the service hasn’t been reaching that wide or that diverse an audience and, basically, it’s just not cost-effective anymore. NPR plans to continue conversations about their content on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. There’s a possibility NPR.org will eventually implement a new commenting system, but there’s nothing on the horizon for the foreseeable future.
Here at AirTalk we interact with our listeners and use their web comments all the time.
Do you see NPR’s move away from comments as a good thing? Is this part of a greater trend? How might getting rid of online comments affect your relationship with news outlets?
Guest:
Shan Wang, Staff writer at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab