Archive for April, 2010

OK, I’m sold on the Facebook “Like” buttons that anyone can add to their site. I’ve added them to my blog items. Please Like them.

In an effort to integrate Twitter into my blog a bit better, I’m trying out Twitter’s @Anywhere, which adds a pop-up info box when you hover over an @ Twitter address (among other things). So, let’s see how this works with mention of a couple Twitter addresses…

@steveouting

@dmediakitchen

It’s pretty easy to set up. @Anywhere gives you a few lines of custom Javascript to add to your site or blog; I simply added it to the end of my Wordpress header.php file.

I like it so far. Notice the “more…” link in the pop-ups; they give you more info on the Twitter account that you’re hovering over. … I’ll explore and add more @Anywhere features later, when I have some free time.

When comments come into this blog, I moderate them before they are published. Like most blogs (or any web publishing platform that accepts user comments), this one receives far more comment spam than legitimate comments. Comment anti-spam program Askimet catches, I’d guess, more than 99% of my incoming comment spam.

In the last few months, I’ve noticed an increasing number of comment spammers getting past Askimet and into my comment approval queue. What’s both annoying and amusing is that the way these spammers are getting past my anti-spam measure is that they are writing personalized notes, which also include a link to some spammy website.

Here’s an example I ran across in my web travels today, on another site:

That one is of the generic “That was a terrific post! I’ve bookmarked your blog!” variety. Comment spam filters catch most of those, though not that one.

The ones that do get through to my moderation queue on this blog actually refer to what I was writing about. Someone (I’m imagining a low-paid Nigerian with at least rudimentary English skills working in a comment-spam sweatshop) is banging out inane comments but actually reading bloggers’ posts, or at least headlines, and tayloring the spam comment to the blog post it’s aimed at.

I’d post an example, but I usually click the “spam” button to delete them. I decided to write about this after twice today coming across on other sites these kinds of spam comments that got through to publication — because those site owners don’t moderate or vet comments before they’re published online, relying solely on a comment spam filter to catch this crap. But if the spammers are personalizing the comments to what you’re writing about, it’s unlikely that a filter will catch those.

So here’s my plea: Start moderating your user comments before publication. It’s a real turn-off to visit a blog or website and see that the owner is letting this happen.

At an increasing number of websites, this latest form of comment spam is adding to the chaos that’s already rampant in comment threads when site owners don’t require commenters to user their real names. So you end up with, as New York Times media reporter David Carr describes them, lots of stupid, often disgusting comments from the “low sloping forehead” crowd.

Here’s a second suggestion, and this one is aimed especially at newspaper websites, many of which are guilty of letting their user comments turn into online cesspools: It’s high time to start demanding that those who wish to comment on a story presented on a website or blog to use their real names and register their personal data (i.e., name and confirmed e-mail address). Those who abide by this rule can have their comments posted immediately and unmoderated.

Of course, there are legitimate reasons sometimes for an online user to post a comment anonymously. But that’s easy to handle, in different ways:

• Set up a “post anonymously” comment form, but have an editor moderate those comments
• Allow pseudonyms instead of real names on user accounts, but always moderate those comments

Too many untended user-comment threads, especially on news sites which are of course filled with controversial content and issues, are starting to really stink. It well past the time to start cleaning out the stench and saying goodbye to the anonymous trolls.

Face it, for many of you right now, your user comments suck. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Josh Stearns of Free Press called me out on Twitter yesterday: “@steveouting Would love to get your thoughts on Mutter… my response is here http://bit.ly/cVoWrc.” Well, I better not ignore that call to action…

Stearns is referring to Alan Mutter’s item this week on his Newsosaurus blog, “Non-profits can’t possibly save the news,” in which the news-media analyst opens:

“An amazing number of smart and sophisticated people continue to harbor the fantasy that philanthropic contributions can take over funding journalism from the media companies that traditionally have supported the press.”

Mutter cites figures that American newsrooms today are spending $1.6 billion a year less on journalism than in 2006, and suggests that there’s no way that foundation and philanthropic funding of non-profit news organizations will get anywhere close to making up for all that lost news coverage.

TexasTribune.org (a non-profit online news entity) founder John Thornton did a great job of refuting Mutter’s take on non-profit news, and I doubt I can do better. But to satisfy Josh, I’ll add my few cents. …

Of all that lost for-profit journalism that used to be published by newspapers, lots of it is no longer needed. Newspapers have lost plenty of movie and book reviewers; foreign and Washington, D.C., correspondents; sports reporters who travel across the country to cover every away game; and on and on. I don’t mean to belittle the loss of those jobs, but the Internet has made available plenty of credible replacements.

Is it necessary that my hometown paper have a professional movie reviewer, when I can read a wide range of professional and movie-goer reviews on my laptop or phone? I’m not the only person who’s stood in front of the multiplex theater deciding what movie to see by checking the reviews and trailers using Flixster on my smartphone. … That the local metro paper no longer has a correspondent in D.C. is lamentable, but there are plenty of replacements just a few clicks or finger-taps away. … Foreign news coverage? I’ve never had such a wide range of sources available to me, for free, no less.

In other words, plenty of that $1.6 billion in lost newspaper journalism is not going to be replaced; it already has been by other parties.

The part of that lost journalism that’s most important — and has not been replaced by new digital players because there’s no business model to support it — is investigative, in-depth, watchdog, enterprise journalism. You know, the months-long investigation by dogged reporters that uncovers the corruption by the county sewer board that’s led to poison in your drinking water. The stuff that wins Pulitzer Prizes.

Newspapers are doing less of that important work, and that’s unlikely to change. Non-profit news organizations like TexasTribune, ProPublica, Voice of San Diego, and many others can fill some of the loss — for a lot less than $1.6 billion a year.

Non-profit news will grow — it must grow — in order to cover that part of the news (the most important to our communities and society) for which a profitable business model no longer exists to support. I believe that foundations, philanthropists, individual donors, and development of non-profit business models that are sustainable without requiring unending foundation checks is achievable for a non-profit news eco-system to supplement the weakened for-profit news media.

Mutter, whose musings I often enjoy, is guilty of thinking too black-and-white, I’d say, with his blog post this week. Non-profit news will grow, prosper, and serve the public better than the sector has in the past. It will be but one part of an increasingly diverse news eco-system.

I can’t think of anyone in the media-criticism or industry-punditry space with views that fit into Mutter’s opening-paragraph description.