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To Be or Not to Be a Blog

Mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford, availing himself of his constitutional right to protest injustice, has fired off a letter to the Hartford Courant lambasting the paper for allowing unfiltered “racist” remarks from commentators on its internet site.

Anyone who has visited such sites knows that such sections of internet newspapers are full of bomb throwing, uncivil brutes who can’t spell. These too are exercising their God given constitutional rights to pull the hair pieces from the heads of politicians and whip them up in the air like the hats of naval colleges graduates.

Hey, you don’t like it? Move to Cuba.

Begin with the quite ordinary and unchallengeable assertion that newspapers are not blog sites and all of Perez’s objections seem reasonable. He is urging editors to monitor the comment sections and clean out the bar of brawlers and ruffians.

Editorials in newspapers, always unsigned, are anonymous, and newspapers generally select which letters are to be printed. Letters are scrupulously checked to confirm authorship, and unsigned letters are not printed. Under this regimen, comments in the letters to the editor section of newspapers are generally civil in tone and content.

On blog sites, much of this is reversed. While the leading commentaries on blogs are not signed and sometime attributed to pseudonyms, the lead writers are generally identifiable. The opposite is true of newspaper editorials attributed to editorial boards and publishers. Some of the blog bylines are masked, but the masks are transparent. The comment section of blogs, however, is written by writers who may choose to be anonymous.

And anonymity brings with it a certain amount of devilry. When writers wear opaque masks they become less civil. We are on our best behavior when Mom is looking over our shoulders. When her children are not identifiable, they tend become more childlike and unruly.

To the extent that newspapers want to be blogs, they will reap the whirlwind of incivility.

Perez objects to the incivilities on parade in the comment section of newspaper internet sites and thinks that the rules that govern comment in newspapers ought to apply to such sites. Some of the commentary here, Perez argues, borders on racism and should be policed by the same people who phone up newspaper letter writers to confirm their authorship.If as Albert Camus says "every word written is a commitment," why should we not see to it that authors “own” their commitments by signing their work?

It ought to be noted that Perez is not insisting on a standard more severe than that which applies to newspapers. Any chatter about shackling writers who are exercising their First Amendment rights would therefore be out of place.

Perez wants newspapers to be newspapers even when they are “printed” online. The proprietors of newspapers think that than online papers should be more like blogs.

To the extent they are governed by rules applicable to newspapers, they will be unable to attract the interest of young people who have voted with their fingers for blogs and against newspapers.

To the owners and publishers of newspapers, it’s a money thing. Civility obviously does not pay.

We all know how this one is going to play out. Money trumps civility.

At least one blogger and columnist who is “troubled by the degree to which the Topix comment threads on Courant articles are so reliably a sewer of racism, unfocused hostility, cheap invective and hate speech” has thrown his lot in with the gang of trolls, commentators who rove from blog to blog fragging other polite commentators. He says the good apples should drive the bad apples from the commentary basket. Commentators should police themselves.

Good luck with that.

The real problem is that the dying newspaper industry is in the throws of an identity crisis brought on, some people think, by penury. The identity crisis places internet newspaper sites between a rock and a hard place. Should they be newspapers or blogs? That problem will not be settled by permitting hate spewing grown up children to splatter their spittle on the corpse.

Notice: This blog has been updated.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think blogs should exercise their right to censor the material that shows up on their site. I tend to think that if any comment board goes on for a long time, with commentators feeling no incentive to be civil, there's going to be bad words said.

By the way, I came across your blog when I looked up "red in a blue state." I'm from Seattle, now live in the Bay Area and feel stranded in these liberal cities. =( Good job!
Don Pesci said…
Hey Michael, thanks for the rose. I like Hitchens too, but he’s been neglecting his own blog of late; probably penning yet another humorless tract on the world as seen from the atheist rabbit hole, not his strong suit. I hadn't seen his assault on humorless women. Very funny. Greetings from the axe the tax cut state.
Anonymous said…
Don, thanks for taking a look at my blog. The attack on humorless women is hilarious. I'm not touching the topic with a ten foot pole, but there's something refreshing about his honesty and disregard for political correctness.
mccommas said…
I have been banned on CT Local Politics because I won an arguement with 'Genghis Conn" on sex education!

I guess he can do that. It is his site but I clearly won the arugement. Whoo Hoo!

Thats why you don't see me there anymore. Now I go to Headless Horseman and garden more.

Hey, did you steal that line "Don't like it, move to Cuba" from me or do other people actually say that? I thought I invented it!

I don't go into chat rooms anymore because of all the racist stuff but they have a right to say those things I guess

--but I chose not to listen.

http://johnrmccommas.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

http://johnrmccommas.blogspot.com/search?q=Christopher+R.+Bigelow
Don Pesci said…
John,

I’ve read your links and, for what it’s worth, there is nothing censorable there. Don’t let’em get away with it. Just continue to comment in CLP, and if they censor, they censor; the shame will be on them. Keep banging away; you might move the mountain. Good luck to you.

As to "Move to Cuba," just plucked it out of the air. I thought of writing "Just move to China," the new facist love interest of the unconcerned. But everyone will be moving there soon -- for the Olympics. Cuba is still the baren wasteland of unfulfilled socialist dreams.
mccommas said…
Thanks Don but I think its like shouting in a vacumn. No one can hear me and even if they did, Biglow and company have made up their minds.

Besides, I can't comment unless I use another computer. This one is banned. They got my number, I forget what you call it.

I can comment from school using a fake name and that computer but I find it a waste of time.

I am never going to change their mind anyway. I should concentrate on the newspaper. There I can make a difference.

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