There has been news coverage lately of news outlets ending their online comments, most notably NPR. The Quad-City (Ill.) Times also ended its online comments in August. Some of the best commentary on these changes was from readers themselves (of the Guardian). Salon also write a useful article.
Both the Times and NPR note that their organizations and individual journalists are on Twitter and Facebook, and the paper still publishes letters to the editor.
The editor of the Quad-City Times, Autumn Phillips, wrote:
I’m not breaking any ground here. By shutting off online comments, the Quad-City Times joins a long line of media companies doing the same. This past October, Wired magazine published an article, “A Brief History of the End of the Comments.” The first domino, they wrote, was probably Popular Science magazine in 2014, followed by CNN and the Chicago Sun-Times that same year, citing concerns over “quality.” National Public Radio is ending comments later this month.This is all true, but I am skeptical that these changes are "the first domino."
