The Changing Face of Local Journalism

In his latest regular column in the Courier News, managing editor Paul C. Grzella, commented on some of the feedback at the community outreach meeting from last week, one that I witnessed. He wrote that “one of the community members who attended talked about how an opinion piece she wrote and that we published in the paper generated some unkind words on our Web site.”

Before newspapers adopted the Internet, letters-to-the-editor were submitted for publishing either by email or ‘snail mail.’ Original letter writers and those wishing to respond were bound by the same crisp rule designed to keep at least a moderate level of sanity in the process:

As I remember it, the policy of the Courier News was that it would print only letters and responses signed and submitted with a name and legitimate telephone number for confirmation of the author’s identity. I think the author’s address also was required. Anonymous contributions were simply not published.

This process maintained a reasonable level of social consciousness and integrity. But Internet practice has flushed at least part of those rules down the tubes. Today, anyone with a fictitious handle can respond to just about anything on the ‘net.

A person can be as careful, thoughtful, and as intelligent as can be with his or her response to a known author. Conversely, a person’s Internet response can be …… well …… as inconsiderate, uninformed, and as dim-witted as one can imagine. But that’s the way it is. Most professional journalists that I read and the few that I know will tell you that they don’t like it.

But the newspaper business is in an economic crunch. The anything-goes rules for online reader responses have been cast in stone for a long time, and newspapers have little influence on those rules. There is a need to carry on and to keep getting those ‘clicks’ on Web pages and the accompanying ads that may help them to survive and to prosper.

Freedom of speech is a powerful instrument of liberty. But it doesn’t inoculate anyone from the written thoughts of aspiring dolts.