As traditional journalism (print and broadcast) struggles to find a way in the digital realm, one of the biggest hurdles has been how to deal with the feedback. Reporters and editors aren’t used to “listening” in an age where everyone can be a publisher. Sure, there are “Letters to the Editor,” but those always came with the caveat and expectation of heavy moderation.

Later, it occurred to newsrooms that allowing people to comment on stories would be great. Anything involving your community of readers must be good; if it drives pageviews, then so much the better. But they were not ready to deal with the problems of trolls and astroturf (like I chronicled in Alabama’s Bingo Battle.)

The award-winning Anniston Star and all its sister publications at Consolidated Publishing are turning the Klieg lights on the cockroaches with a new policy for online comments:

Readers who like to comment on stories on the St. Clair Times Web site were surprised this morning to discover that their comments are now identified by their e-mail addresses instead of a user name.

Implementation of a new company-wide policy got a little ahead of notification in this case. However, as of today, all the Web sites operated by the Consolidated Publishing Co., which include the St. Clair Times, the Daily Home, the Anniston Star, the Jacksonville News, the Cleburne News and the Piedmont Journal, are publishing the e-mail addresses of those who choose to comment on online articles.

The purpose of the new policy is not to discourage comments, but rather to discourage personal insults, accusations and the anonymous publication of personal information about other people.

The St. Clair Times and all of Consolidated Publishing values readers’ opinions and comments. We believe those comments have greater strength when they are accompanied by the identity of the writer. That is why we insist on having full contact information when we publish letters to the editor, and why we now publish contact information with online comments.

(I linked to the version in the St. Clair Times, because the Anniston Star has a very strict paywall and I don’t want to share a dead link.)

What this means

This is a big step for transparency, and an indication publishers are starting to see the diminishing returns of having anonymous free expression.

To be honest, I’d not seen abusive comments in any of the Consolidated papers, however I don’t subscribe to the Star so I’m not sure what they’re dealing with there. But I’m not surprised that smaller, more community-based papers are making the move first. As I found in while talking with others in April, many of the larger newspaper chains farm out their websites to a separate division. The decision-makers for AL.com, for instance, are in New Jersey where they also run NJ.com and Michigan Live and no telling how many other sites with the same infrastructure, architecture and rules.

It makes me think even more the future of journalism is in hyper-local. The big chains have the economies of scale, but those economies of scale don’t matter as much when you’re renting pixels instead of buying ink and pulp for the enterprise. Small means nimble, and nimble means making the moves that matter to the people you’re near. At the very least, this is a signal the smaller outfits will reassert the mantle of innovation.

Your turn

What do you think about the change? Is it a harbinger of something else? (Your email address will remain confidential.)