Comments: The Battle Between Journalism and Value

Comments are an intertubes staple. It seems like an unalienable right to slap every column, blog post and story we read with our pithy verbiage.

But what happens when our inane comments have real world consequences, and what is the real value of comments?

Here in Cleveland, a high-profile capital murder case was ratcheted up another notch last week because of this wonderful internet phenomenon on cleveland.com, the internet home of the area’s largest paper, The Plain Dealer.

While investigating an inflammatory comment about the previously unknown personal life of a writer, editors at cleveland.com (and later the PD editorial staff) learned that the inappropriate user “lawmiss” had the same e-mail address as Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold, the presiding judge in the capital murder case. A week earlier, Saffold had been in the news for threatening contempt on a PD writer.

When reviewing other entries, it was discovered “lawmiss” had also offered opinions on three of Saffold’s cases, including the case named above. But wait… there’s more: the comments could also be tied to her court-issued computer.

After consulting with lawyers, PD Editor Susan Goldberg allowed reporters to out “lawmiss” and reveal the story in a front page article.

The ethics of outing a commenter (in this case) is a non-story to me. There should be no expectation of privacy on any site if you are stupid enough to use an identifiable email address AND happen to threaten, harass or expose employees (and their family members) of the very site you are commenting on.

I’m more concerned with the apparent divide in the current PD/cleveland.com partnership. As revealed in the stories written about “lawmiss,” cleveland.com is run by a sister company, Advance Internet, not the editorial staff at the PD.

Think about that for a moment: Imagine your blog being run by an entity other than yourself: different goals, different strategies and a completely different mindset. In Sunday’s paper, a PD columnist even theorized that allowing anonymity in the comments is “an invitation to mischief” and has impacted the types of columns she will write. At the same time, Advance Internet responded by ensuring future anonymity and taking steps to block editorial staffs from unveiling e-mail addresses in the future.

If the column is any indication, this divide between editorial and online will continue to grow. Cleveland.com purposefully allows anonymous comments in order to keep the online conversation “freewheeling.” If Advance Internet wanted to, they could ensure that comments were civil. But they don’t want to dampen the type or amount of comments, and here’s why:

1. Comments can increase readers’ time-on-site. Whether or not you believe that Google takes time-on-site into account within their algorithm, surely advertisers would like a longer shot at some clicks.
2. Comments can bring us back. The easier it is to sign up and comment, the more likely people are to comment. And if they are anything like me, these often comical/infuriating barbs give me a reason to come back. We call that stickiness, and it works.
3. Comments can decrease bounce rates.  By themselves, comments don’t reduce the bounce rate, however, when sites have six pages of comments, a lot of us click on at least the second page.
4. Comments add content. Yes, it may not be much and it may be grammatically dicey, but you better believe that it’s part of the overall content on the page.

When the cleveland.com web team meets with their bosses, they look at a lot of key performance indicators. They know that comments, because of their cost and value, can improve on many of them. If they’re smart, they’ve already assigned a specific dollar amount to comments and know which types of headlines/stories will garner them (and how to promote more of them). To be clear, this does not make Advance Internet or cleveland.com the bad guys, it’s just seems as though web goals can often be very different than editorial goals.

It does mean, however, that the trolls will be sticking around and have their say. We’re too valuable. Besides, as a Cleveland ad agency, we still read the paper everyday.

I’m looking forward to your pithy verbiage below. If you’re interested in the melding of social media elements can affect SEO strategy, contact us today.

Flickr photo courtesy of zzathras777.