Comments and Unruly Crowds

When opening up too much leads to chaos

Maurice Cardinal interviews Debbie Kornmiller from the Arizona Star via telephone, May 18th, 2007

Debbie Kornmiller has been in the news business professionally since 1981 – 26 years. She is currently responsible for the “comments” section, which as she describes, is regarded by her employer, the Arizona Star, as “customer service.”

Her official title is “Reader Advocate.”

How did it come about that you are in the position of being responsible for the “commenting” segments?

The customer service position has been in existence on and off at the Star newspaper since the 70’s, and during times of “budget cuts,” it is the first department to be retired and then brought back when the economy looks rosier. Ms. Kornmiller feels that their readers need to be heard in the newsroom in a consistent fashion and that nothing makes them madder than when they are ping ponged through the system and no one listens. She is the one stop shop. As she explained, her role is to “listen and help, and either fix it, have it fixed, or explain why it will never be fixed.”

She held this “customer service” position way before online commenting on articles came into existence. Although not personally responsible for setting policy, Kornmiller has spent considerable time deciding what to do with online comments, how to monitor people who comment, and how to give them freedom of the Web while maintaining decorum and remaining civil, which of late has been a challenge for her newspaper. For clarity, others within the organization set policy and monitor the comments sections while Ms. Kornmiller manages operational responsibilities.

Q: How long has the Arizona Star been involved in “commenting?”

The Arizona Star newspaper launched online commenting in 1995, but dropped it in 2000 due to civility challenges. They resurrected it in 2005, when, as Ms. Kornmiller describes, “it became fashionable again.” They brought it back as “unmonitored conversation,” which again quickly grew out of control.

The challenges in the early years with civility occurred when “very loud voices in the room crowded out” people who were trying to manage a civil conversation.

In the beginning profanity was a big issue, and to a lesser extent it still is today, but like all similar online conversational platforms profanity now takes a back seat to threats, intimidation, and spiteful responses that are hateful and racist. The Star had conversations about the “F” word, and agreed that if it wasn’t appropriate in print, it was also not appropriate online, but then what about the variations like frick’n, frigg’n, or that old standby, F’n. They considered and debated what was appropriate or not. They also discovered (if you’re familiar with forums it’s not surprising) that most of the comment threads eventually spun into issues unrelated to the article. In the Star’s case the recurring theme was/is immigration issues. Ms. Kornmiller said they even had recipe and food articles flame out at the Mexican border sixty miles away. Ola!

Ms. Kornmiller feels that they had a better handle on “commenting” when they brought the feature back a second time because they were more prepared. Regarding rules and guidelines the second time around, she said, “We tell readers that this is our house and when you come to someone’s house there are standards, whether being polite or kind. We set the standards because it is our house. And if you don’t like the rules of our house go to someone else’s house, or create your own house, but this is what you need in order to live in our house.”

Q: Is news media’s responsibility to educate and inform the public?

Kornmiller's response: "I personally have not shouldered any of that. We simply say, here are the rules you will abide by. We keep those rules on every page as a reminder of how readers should behave - like a set of guidelines.”

When I asked if guidelines were always in place on the site she said “no” and that they eventually came to realize they needed something online to give readers direction, and pointed out that unlike professional writers, readers do not have a journalistic code of ethics as a reference. She also explained that professional journalists in general have a sense of good or bad behavior, what’s over the top, or just under the line, what’s good for a tabloid, and what a newspaper writer can do. Ms. Kornmiller did suggest however that it might be a good idea to “get readers together and create one.”

Q: Why are some readers so aggressive? Has the Star tried to win them over?

Kornmiller's response: “I haven’t personally, but when readers are taken out of the conversation [banned] they have called our executive editor or managing editor wanting to know why. Or, when someone posts something that might be questionable, there is someone who will then shoot an email to the three people who monitor [content segments] and say, “Have you seen what so in so is saying?”

I was curious to know how the Star prevents people from manipulating the conversation to lure readers away to other blogs or competitors, and Ms. Kornmiller said they are not actively concerned about it, but she did say, ”Sometimes a conversation takes an unexpected turn, and you may have readers try and get it back on track.”

Interestingly, StarNet’s guidelines comprise only four short paragraphs, the first two being:

** 1.) We welcome your comments on articles, editorials, columns, other topics on StarNet or any subjects important to you. Commentary submitted to StarNet (www.azstarnet.com) may be published or distributed in print, electronically or other forms. Opinions expressed in www.azstarnet.com's comments reflect the opinions of the author, and are not necessarily the opinions of the Star, StarNet, or its parent company. See terms of service for more information.

** 2.) Our guidelines prohibit the solicitation of products or services, the impersonation of another site user, threatening or harassing postings and the use of vulgar, abusive, obscene or sexually oriented language, defamatory or illegal material. You may not post content that degrades others on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual preference, disability or other classification. It's fine to criticize ideas, but ad hominem attacks are prohibited. Users who violate those standards may lose their privileges on azstarnet.com.

Basically, the first two paragraphs are not guidelines as much as they are “legal terms of use and effective tools to prevent people from luring readers away to other blogs or even competitive news media sites.” In fact, the last two paragraphs also describe “terms of use” and there are almost no constructive guidelines except for the line above stating “Our guidelines prohibit the solicitation of products or services . . .” which is what I was referring to when I asked whether the Star prevents people from manipulating the conversation and luring readers away to other blogs or competitors. I asked because I was curious to know how they protect their audience from being raided by the competition. Many traditional news companies still operate stringently under the old business model where you aggressively protect your intellectual property. It’s all they know, and all they have. The same situation occurred in the late 90’s when the music industry chose to fight their customers instead of learning to develop a new marketing strategy. We all know the outcome – today at least 80% of music is traded illegally online. The music industry lost, and consumers won.

I also noticed later in the StarNet guidelines they state; “. . . we're removing the ability to put HTML coding into the comments. People were misusing that feature by pulling in cartoons, photos and other copyrighted materials from publications elsewhere. We won't allow you to use our pages to violate other publications' copyrights.”

It seems odd to take this drastic measure on a news site that allows people to comment on news stories. What happened to “fair use” respective of news reporting? If you use a brief example of another’s work as a reference tool to make your point it is legal, ethical, and standard operating procedure in the industry?

Intellectual property issues aside, what the Star literally means is that they are removing the option of placing “href” tags (link code) into a comment, because in the next paragraph they describe a “scratch pad” where you can practice applying HTML code before you have to post a comment in perpetuity online. Good for new users, but a bit confusing especially when a person wanting to comment is looking for more positive direction. The “legal terms of use” read more like a “what NOT to do” as opposed to a “what to do” helpful guide. The tone and wording start people off on the wrong note, and are not very inviting or friendly, which is completely opposite of how Ms. Kornmiller regards the value of the comment sections and blogs. She sounds genuine and passionate in her quest to create an amiable atmosphere, but her personality is not reflected in the so-called guidelines.

I asked, “Is there a core of readers that follow the rules?” and Kornmiller replied, “Yes. There are also groups of readers who try to welcome new readers and also try to tune out those who are the loudest."

The Star comments section uses “Thumb Up & Thumb Down hand icons to reader-rank acceptance of comments so I asked if the thumb strategy adds to the quality of comments. Ms. Kornmiller replied, “. . . it’s a sign for people new to the conversation. If they don’t want to read certain types of comments they could skip over them.”

S“We had a program where everything was commentedable. You could comment on all stories but it was too cumbersome [for the newspaper] to monitor,” said Kornmiller. She went on to say, “To monitor every single story was too laborious. We don’t have someone who’s title is “full time monitor.” We have a core group of people [three] who go in and monitor. Instead we restrict stories [meaning that readers cannot comment on every article they see online].

________________

StarNetCode of Ethics

Rule #1:
"The Arizona Daily Star and StarNet expect staff members to seek and convey the truth in all aspects of their work."

Lee Enterprises - Parent to Arizona Star- Top Priorities 2007

Rule #1:
Grow revenue creatively and rapidly

_________________

I asked if Ms. Kornmiller thought they would have better success this time around or was she concerned the Star might not be able to manage it the way the owners and publishers, Lee Enterprises, expect?

Ms. Kornmiller replied, “Our owners have a guideline for the chain of what they expect on online comments.” I then asked if she was fearful that the Star might not be able to keep the comments section alive due to uncivil responses, and she quickly replied, “No, no, no, that’s not a problem at all. Our owners Lee Enterprises said there needs to be some monitoring of the conversation . . . and they’ve given guidance to monitor. Now they didn’t say how, and they didn’t say when. I’m sure there is some bigger discussion on this. They’ve given us some guidelines to live by.”

In the last two U.S. presidential elections politicians used early adopter versions of citizen journalism and crowdsourcing to sway voters. And in the upcoming primaries and next presidential election on November 4, 2008, crowdsource companies are already assembling huge citizen journalism networks in an effort to have even more of an impact. Some see it as a boon to democracy, while others feel it could subvert political strategies that have historically been managed through traditional news media companies.

I asked Ms. Kornmiller, ”Considering that citizen journalism and crowdsourcing help politicians win elections, how do you think it will trickle down to the news industry?”

“I think there is great skepticism [regarding whether cj is feasible]. We have tried citizen journalism with our blogs. I’m meeting with all of our bloggers in the next month to go over our code of ethics because we’ve had what we would consider at least in-house breaches of that code, and to explain what plagiarism is, and how to source things. I think there is a big learning curve,” said Kornmiller.

She went on to say, and the following is critically important, “Regarding citizen journalism, you have to find the citizens who can do it. They have to have some stake in why they’re doing it. Politics is a natural fit because it’s [covered by] people who have passion about something. But I don’t know if you have that same passion about fire district meetings. So when the stakes are higher, when you know there is more passion about the subject, it seems to me then you have to be more cautious about the sourcing.”

I prefaced the next question by saying, “Citizen journalism and crowdsourcing break down walls and create transparency. In the traditional analog world, sometimes the truth is kept secret or modified in an effort to generate profit. Quite often the public doesn’t understand how business works, and they feel that everything should be put on the table.”

I then asked, “Will we have to redefine the definition of truth?”

“There a fine line between censoring and . . .” and Ms. Kornmiller jumped in to say, “As long as it’s tasteful. As long as your not saying bad words and using racial slurs, you can have as much truth as you want. You just have to have it in a polite conversation.”

When I asked, “What happens when they step over the line and criticize advertisers?” Ms. Kornmiller replied, “We haven’t encountered that yet, but I think we would be tolerant of that. What I think the public hasn’t done is . . you have a very small segment of the population that understands the power of online comments or blogging. And once it becomes more mainstream it because more powerful and you have to monitor it in a much different fashion.”

I then asked, “So, are we still in an early adopter phase?” She replied, “I think so, again, people are still trying to decide how much time they have for news and information. If you want to do more blogging you’re going to have to turn off the tv, or reject something else in order to spend more time blogging. I don’t think traditional bloggers are doing it [blogging] at work. I think traditional workplace information seekers are looking for news and they are reading and not necessarily participating during the workday because that’s the rules of the workplace. You can go and look at a site, read reports, read newspapers, and your employer will never know the difference, but once you start commenting your address is shown in the history.

I asked, “Is it hard for you to take ideas upstairs and talk to your owners and publishers, people who are making financial decisions?” and she quickly replied, “No” with a laugh. “We’re a pretty open place. Anybody can have an idea about anything. How do you think we got knitting? We had a brainstorming session about what blogs we have, and came up with some new ones. Blogs are [managed] in-staff except for two community websites that have community bloggers. You don’t find your expertise in the blog you take your expertise to the blog.”

Q: What surprised you the most with your commenting project?

A: “That people can find so very ways (sic) to be mean-spirited and hurtful. In many ways it's the same as email or anonymous phone messages. I don't believe that people would say the things they do without the cloak of anonminity (sic). Ear-to-ear or face-to-face conversation starts out with civility as the rule. That's not the case with online commenting.”