Who is closing comment sections?

[Back posting on the blog after a summer hiatus.]

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."


Klint Finley's Wired article last year recounted the publications that have ended comments, including those listed by Phillips.

However, a quick review of the top 100 media outlets finds only six that do not allow comments. The list is taken from the top media outlets as determined by BurrellesLuce in 2014. The New York Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times, Investor's Business Daily, Boston Herald and Chattanooga Times Free Press do not allow comments. Nearly all the 100 outlets do not allow anonymous comments. Most encourage Facebook comments.

So there are a lot of dominoes yet to fall, and I think the creative energy is in the other direction - toward finding ways to allow the audience to comment and discuss in more controlled environments. These ways will probably include developments from efforts such as the Coral Project and Civil Comments to develop efficient automated content moderation to keep trolls at bay.