Bombarded by vicious online postings concerning race and immigration, a Ventura County newspaper has pulled the plug on a virtual bulletin board that invited readers to comment on stories that appeared on the paper's website.
Thousands of Ventura County Star readers have posted messages since January, when the newspaper launched the feature as a way to connect with the community and let residents have a say, said John Moore, assistant managing editor for new media and technology.
Comments were posted live and largely un-moderated. But too often, Moore said, topic threads spun out of control, with readers peppering posts with profanity and engaging in personal attacks. Even the most routine story would degenerate into a string of invectives, often centering on ethnicity and immigration status.
The newspaper disabled the online comments section Wednesday, but Moore said he hoped to resurrect the feature, with tighter controls, perhaps as early as next week.
"All of us were sad we had to shut it down at all," said Moore, noting an escalation in the online nastiness in recent weeks. "We didn't have the staff to spend 24 hours a day watching this."
Newspapers across the country are wrestling with similar issues amid shifting expectations about how information is delivered and changing attitudes about the public's role as both news consumer and purveyor, media analysts say.
They say news organizations are increasingly looking for ways to connect with readers and get them to invest in the news of the day, either in print or online.
To that end, news outlets update websites with breaking stories, and some supply readers with reporters' e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Only a handful of newspapers go as far as placing links at the bottom of stories that invite public comment, analysts say.
"I think that generally it's fair to say that journalism and the way that people gain information is becoming less of an organized lecture through the media and more of an open dialogue in which citizens are active participants," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington D.C.-based Project for Excellence in Journalism
"I think that's utterly in keeping with the larger purpose of journalism, which is to inspire debate," Rosenstiel added. "But even people on the cutting edge of this new culture are struggling with how far they can extend that kind of open mike."
At newsrooms nationwide, such public participation has met with mixed results.
