Withering website issues facing newspapers

For some reason the webmasters at the Flint Journal are no longer posting the weekly Sunday columns of the two main editors at the Journal. At least when you click on the link to their names the columns posted there are well more than a month old, in the case of one two months.

If you read through their columns online you will find almost no comments. The only column that the editor wrote that drew significant comments (about 21, which is pathetic by Detroit Free Press standards) was his defense of the new website against an onslaught of angry reader criticism.

There have been some recent significant errors on the website, some which were quietly fixed and others that are archived with the mistakes.

One recent one was in a cutline for a feature on an old homicide case. The story (accurately, by the way) indicated the woman was found dead in 2004 in her 2002 vehicle. The caption (or cutline in newspaper terms) indicated she died in 2002. Maybe a little dyslexia on the part of someone, but I checked two days later and the error remained even though a commenter pointed out the error.

The comments are not frequently moderated either.

All newspapers are facing the new challenge of letting readers take over control of websites. I'm not familiar with how all newspapers watch over comments, but it is clear that there is a severe need for pre-moderation of comments.

Newspapers that wouldn't think of putting a trained, professional journalist's copy in the newspaper before it was edited are quick to allow any anonymous poster to spew hate and venom without anyone looking it over.

This has to be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Maybe it already has somewhere. In Tuesday's Flint Journal website there was a story about political signs involving Flint Mayor Don Williamson. About 11:30 p.m., long after any editors are on duty at the Journal, a poster named "inyourbiznes" posted the following comment, which I have edited to remove a city employee's name:

Inyourbiznes:

Williamson = Old Redneck


(Employee) = Young Redneck


Both have a sixth grade education and are like children. If (the employee) would stop stealing saws, mowers and wood from the Parks and Recreation Department that would be a news story. Drive by his home and you can see it all sitting in his yard with his god-awful recall sign. This guy is a hilljack!! He is trying to win a suit against the city just like his daddy did years ago. And with the Con involved he probably will win.Both of these men should be proud. Proud for the fine face they put on representing their city.

Inappropriate?

Alert us." (End of post)

There's enough libel in there to make someone pretty wealthy. And who knows who "inyourbiznes" really is. Heck, it could be a friend of the city employee trying to drum up a libel suit. The point is the post was up for nearly ten hours before a Journal website monitor removed it with a short comment about it's inappropriateness.

I'm going to start making screen grabs of the offensive comments and saving them so they won't be lost to cyberspace. The point of saving them is to prove that just removing them does not mean they are not still out there.

So in the Flint Journal's case they are OK with letting anyone libel anyone else without having a gatekeeper to stop the offensive remark from being published online. And yet, and I only bring this up again because Channel 12 is continuing to kick the Journal's butt on the Great Lakes Mortgage Broker story with another update Thursday night, they were terrified of printing a story that would have exposed one of the largest mortgage scams in the State because the offender refused to offer a comment last August.

The paper should at least be consistent in its policies about publishing possible libel.