September 1st, 2009 
joel We got our HDTV, and our visit from Ty…along with pain and heartache.
First Press and Tower Post-Sept. 2008
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of this web community devoted to Erie media. Over these last twelve months, through 271 posts, 1,803 approved comments in 12 categories ranging from traditional to new media, we covered the few highs and many lows of a devastating year for local and national media.
First the high notes. This community is a bountifully generous one, and the story that generated the most reaction of a positive nature was our coverage of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition build of a home for East Erie resident Clara Ward. Our daily posts, live blog, video, and audio podcasts gave P&T readers an inside view of what it takes to not only build a 3500 square foot home in less than seven days, but to also shoot a one or two hour network reality television show in the process.
Also, the long-awaited conversion to digital television came and went over a period of nine months when you consider that WQLN went all digital in October 2008 after a powerful storm wreaked their analog transmission system. The last signal to turn off the analog Klystron on June 9th was the first to sign on in 1949: WICU 12. The digital conversion has not meant happy pixels for all Erie citizens, however. Still at almost three months after the deadline, there continues to be a constant stream of letters to the editor in the Erie Times-News from viewers who used to watch analog local TV yet cannot receive the local digital stations due to terrain problems.
WSEE.tv Screen Shot
But it wasn’t just the viewers feeling the despair. These past twelve months were punctuated by layoffs, buyouts, hiring freezes, and salary decreases, not to mention cuts in programming and services and a 50% increase in the price of the daily paper. Country 98 dropped their local morning show and their parent company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, while WJET dropped Rush Limbaugh’s top-rated talk show. The Erie Times-News targeted veteran reporters and editors for end of year buyout in 2008 to attempt to reduce overall staffing by 9%. Lilly Broadcasting announced the merger of the WICU and WSEE news staffs by June 1st, along with a move to the State Street studios. However, it turned out that only the WSEE anchors were retained except one, while all of the videographers and news production people, along with two on-air reporters were let go.
By the end of this bloodbath of a year for media employment we began to doubt it’s future as a viable career option.
It has been my honor to serve you, our dear reader, over these past twelve months. I hope that Press and Tower has been and will continue to be a rewarding place to spend some time and connect with folks with the same passion for quality media. We start the new year with a renewed sense of purpose as strive to keep the lines of communication and access between the practitioners and the consumers of media in Erie wide open.
Speaking of wide open: the door is wide open for your participation in this web community. If you have an idea for a guest post, or would like to see a regular feature here, let us know and we’ll put you right on it! Finally, we hope you enjoy the new look; we just wanted to spruce things up for our second year.
Thank you for your continued and very encouraging support of Press and Tower.
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Yesterday, Erie Blogs ran a blurb on Tom Ridge’s book due out today which read: “…media outlets are saying Ridge was pressured to raise the terror level prior to the 2004 election by Bush administration officials. He’s since backed off on that a bit.”
I pointed out that the Erie Times-News Sunday article on Ridge’s book to which Erie Blogs referred quoted Ridge as saying that he was not pressured, and asked rhetorically how Ridge could back off from something he said he never said.
I further pointed out that the flap over raising the terror code allegedly to bolster former President Bush’s reelection prospects just days prior to the 2004 election was a fabrication of the liberal news media and its surrogates to bash the Bush administration.
Erie Blogs then rewrote the last sentence of its blurb to say that Ridge “has since said that didn’t happen,” and deleted my comment from its blog. Real ethical!
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE ERIE TIMES-NEWS’S ONLINE READERS COMMENT FORUM?
Until last Spring, the Erie Times-News followed the relatively new practice adopted by most newspapers here and abroad in recent years of enabling readers of their online editions to comment freely on articles, in writing, by appending a comment box at the bottom of each article.
Then, without warning, The Times-News dropped the highly popular feature, a move which was explained by Managing Editor Pat Howard as a temporary one while the Times-News’s website – know as GoErie.com – was being reprogrammed or redesigned.
Howard promised readers the feature would be resumed soon thereafter. As all regular readers of GoErie.com know, to date it has not been resumed. And since neither Howard nor any Times-News person has revealed in the prolonged interim why it has been discontinued, or whether it will ever be resumed, readers remain gagged and in the dark.
I e-mailed Howard yesterday to ask him why the Times-News has discontinued online readers’ comments, whether it plans to resume them and, if so, when? Not surprisingly, I’ve not received a response from Howard. If I do, I’ll post it later on this blog.
The Times-News is not the only newspaper to discontinue online readers’ comments, but there have been only a handful nationwide.
While not within the rationale provided by Howard at the time the Times-News discontinued readers’ comments, most of the other newspapers which have done so have cited widespread abuse of the feature, primarily by anonymous bloggers who persistently engage in ad hominem attacks which, if identifiable as to source, could be actionable, obscene language, irrelevant posts and other uncivil practices.
This is a common complaint lodged by virtually every newspaper which allows online readers’ comments. It is mitigated to some extent by some newspapers which attempt to monitor the abusive posts and delete them.
But because they receive hundreds to thousands of readers’ posts each day, depending upon the size of the newspaper, it’s virtually impossible for small newspapers with limited intellectual staff like the Times-News to monitor the comments effectively.
Big metro or national newspapers like the New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times, the Washington Post and others affluent enough to afford them have created staff positions whose exclusive province is to monitor and manage online readers’ comments, because they recognize that in this new era of the worldwide web they must follow the crowd if they are to survive in the fast changing cyber environment.
In some but not all smaller newspapers, the vast majority of comments which are abusive make it into print. While the newspapers provide standing guidelines demanding civility for readers’ comments, they are almost universally ignored, and the newspapers are in most cases helpless to enforce them.
This leaves them with only two options: Either maintain the status quo and continue to suffer the abusive behavior – an unpleasant option at best – or discontinue the highly popular online readers’ comments altogether, and alienate their spiraling online readership. The latter is the path the Times-News has apparently chosen.
There is, however another option which would almost certainly eliminate most if not all of the abuses pertinent to online readers’ comments: disallow anonymity or psuedonymity, an option which I personally support. (See, for example, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Maureen Dowd’s recent column on anonymous blogging, “Stung by the Perfect Sting,” Aug. 26, perhaps the only time I’ve ever agreed with her hyperbolic rants).
That aside, there’s an unspoken dynamic at play within this context which I believe is primarily responsible for the Times-News’s discontinuance of online readers’ comments, as opposed to the rationales asserted above. An inordinate number of the anonymous ad hominem attacks and abuses were directed at the newspaper staff, its erratic news coverage, editorial stances and its ownership, the longstanding Times Publishing Co., a newspaper monopoly which over the years has swallowed up all the competition, both daily and weekly, except for the Corry Journal, throughout its northwestern PA circulation area, as well as parts of surrounding counties in New York and Ohio.
Much of the commentary, mostly anonymous, was highly critical in unflattering, indeed embarrassing terms of the Times-News’s news and editorial policies and practices and personnel, which are, with good reason, widely seen as biased, shallow, inaccurate, self-serving, unprofessional and arrogant (I concur). Moreover, its Letters to the Editor section is routinely mismanaged.
I believe the thin-skinned operatives at the Times-News chose to discontinue the feature rather than suffer sustained embarrassment at the hands of merciless bloggers, most of them anonymous.
While I do not post or blog anonymously, but always identify myself by name, I was a frequent critic of articles published in the Times-News, as well as its overall news and editorial practices. While I am often blunt in my criticism, I pride myself on my civility. I do not presume, however, that the Times-News discontinued online readers’ comments because of my feeble and captious criticism.
The last comment I posted before online readers’ comments were discontinued occurred on April 12 of this year. In response to Howard’s regular Sunday column boasting of the Times-News’s showing at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Assn’s. awards program, I posted a detailed factual analysis showing that The Times-News’s performance was greatly exaggerated by Howard.
For one thing, the Times-News is not in the same competitive category as the Commonwealth’s major newspapers in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia. And several of the newspapers in towns smaller than Erie made a much better showing. See my April 12, 2009 archive blog at http//.www.eriecounternewsmediablogspot.com.
It should be noted that NO privately or corporately-owned newspaper is obliged to provide a forum for online readers and commenters. However, it ill-behooves any newspaper which persistently and piously preaches on behalf of First Amendment freedoms of press and speech, as the Times-News does, to be seen as a censor of populist expressions of opinion from the vast unwashed which the internet now makes readily and universally possible.
The Times-News is already criticized widely for crass rewriting and editing of Letters to the Editor which is tantamount to, if not actual censorship.
Joel, the new look for the blog is great. Congrats on the first year and here’s to many more. Thanks for your work on this site.
Congrats Joel on your first year with a great website covering Erie media and new technology. I never considered Jack’s site or yours bad in terms of having a competitor. Rather, seeing different points of view between P&T and PBRTV shows that both sites can exist and compliment each other. Best wishes & keep up the GREAT work my friend.
ADDENDUM: WHATEVER HAPPENED…
ADDENDUM: This morning, after my blog on the Erie Times-News online reader forum was posted, I received a response to my query addressed to Managing Editor Pat Howard as to when the newspaper plans to resume online readers’ comments.
It came from Jeffrey Hileman/Managing Editor/New Media. He replied: “Mr. LaRocca – Pat Howard asked me to respond to your questions. GoErie.com plans to reintroduce reader comments as part of its redesign, though we do not yet have a start date.”