At the end of this post I'd said "I'm hoping the inconsistency between word and deed... will turn out to be temporary", and that's how it has turned out: comments from previous years - at least, the formerly missing comments (including mine) to this column - appear to have been restored. Yes, it took a while, but many thanks to those who fixed the problem.
Moral: Sunlight is effective.
Original post follows.
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Just what - and how sincere - is The Union's commitment to its readers? So far, the paper's actions have belied its announcements, and requests for clarification have not been answered.
Earlier this year, The Union unveiled a major website redesign, describing the new site as "an online community news site that allows social networking between Members." The Union's editor said the site is "...meant to showcase our readers' blogs, editorials, comments, poems, photos and other original editorial material - not just ours."
There's a problem: the redesign appears to have deleted prior* reader comments on articles and columns; for example, this column used to have 20 or 30 comments, including one I had linked to in an NCFocus post from last year.
I reported the absence of comments to The Union's Online Project Manager*, who corroborated the problem and reported it to the techs at parent company Swift Newspapers. Two weeks later*, he had not heard back from them.
To me this inaction does not indicate concern for "showcasing" readers' material. And if the earlier comments have really gone missing permanently, it wouldn't be the first time that The Union has engaged in wholesale deletion - without notice, and without explanation - of reader-contributed content.
Rather than engage in shoot-from-the-hip blogger denigration of the paper's commitment to its readers and their content, I emailed The Union's Readership Editor to check whether The Union does have any "commitment to readers" regarding permanence of their online content, and if so, what it is.
No answer.*
I emailed* her a second time, asking for confirmation that she'd received the email.
No answer.
It's pretty clear that my email to the Readership Editor had been received; the Union's Online Project Manager alluded to it by saying, "As far any written commitment to retaining comments on our site... Please see our terms of use - #7 will be the most related to your question."
But #7 is not related*; it only concerns offensive and abusive comments: "TheUnion.com may delete any Content that in the sole judgment of TheUnion.com violates this Agreement or which may be offensive, illegal or violate the rights, harm, or threaten the safety of any person...."
So unless The Union considers all reader comments to be offensive and abusive ipso facto, it appears that our local newspaper:
- trumpets its appreciation for reader comments with one hand while quietly "disappearing" older ones en masse with the other
- is not willing to address the discrepancy.
Also - is it typical, for a newspaper's Readership Editor to be unable to speak on the record about the paper?
2 comments:
Update, 9 days later: I'm told that the Swift techs have found the problem, and that it will be fixed on the "live" website in the next few days.
Thanks to the kind soul who asked them to do this.
(I never did hear back from the paper's Readership Editor; but if she's the one who expedited this, thanks!)
next day update:
it is partly fixed, now you can see some of the comments on that this article. But not all (and not my comment), or at least I couldn't.
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