Dayton Daily News censors comments by political opposition
UPDATE: 11am- apparently it’s a computer glitch. Still would like to see comment moderation on the site.
Hmm, the newspaper apparently is afraid of me posting links back to my responses to their articles.
Comments that I’ve left on their article about Dayton’s $20 million shortfall- not posted. They don’t want you to see “Belt tightening isn’t going to solve the Dayton financial problem”
The real question is how can they allow the vile, stupid, nasty comments- but, delete the ones by potential new community leaders and still think of themselves as a part of our community?
Are you sick of the Dayton bashing on the DDN site? The total lack of moderation ability (and there are simple tools to do this like disqus)? Do you wonder why they censor a candidate– yet always give the incumbents a chance to be heard?
Call and ask for Ray Marcano-
Ray Marcano
Cox Ohio Publishing
1611 S. Main St.
Dayton, Ohio 45409
937-225-2323
[email protected]
Tell him Esrati sent you.
And then tell him what you really think of his “newspaper.”
Hi David,
I noticed that a few weeks ago too. I believe the article was when they were asking for citizens to send in a written letter by an unrealistic turnaround time. Comments were disapproving of the method the city council took and then suddenly, commenting was turned off.
If Dayton Daily knew better, some of the comments could be used to create a story or perhaps provide feedback to the city about how to improve efforts. I understand some people will abuse commenting, but to be able to have people actively engaged in the news shows that Dayton is listening and looking for reasoning.
Let’s cut to the chase: DDN is going to quit publishing daily within a few years. Their M-Th papers are already thin excuses for advertising, and you can already get better content for free online. As soon as someone comes up with a way to deliver some solid journalism to Dayton, the Cox business plan will be reduced to nothing but printing-for-contract.
So why do I want to invest my energies trying to improve quality just prior to extinction?
I’m the last person to defend the Dayton Daily News and their miserable moderation skills, but depending on where I click, I see either 0 comments, 5 comments, or 83 comments for that story. The list of 83 includes three by you, one of which appears to be your original contribution. I think in this case it’s a software glitch rather then a censorship issue.
@valerie- must be a glitch- I see ZERO comments.
Ray e-mailed me back- said it was a glitch-
I’m still not getting the comments at http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/dayton-estimates-20-million-budget-shortfall-for-2010-267025.html?showComments=true&postingId=268538
I’ll redact the post- and trust him since some of you see the comments.
It seems to be fixed now.
But I agree that the DDN’s online moderation is inadequate, lazy (it’s MY job to tell them someone’s breaking their rules?), and unevenly applied from columnist to columnist. One simple solution to bump up the quality content of discourse online would be to merely require a real name, address, and phone number, just as is required for a published Letter to the Editor (as you’re probably aware, nothing but the name and city actually appear). I’m not suggesting they need to check the validity of each and every comment author’s identity, but at least one would know when one posts that it’s a possibility.
There was an article on the St Marys parish and church over on Xenia Avenue that generated a bunch of offensive anti-Catholic comments. I have issues with the Church, but these comments were way way out of line, and the DDN pulled the comments and disaabled the commenting feature for that story. It was suprsing to see the negativity and nastyness on what should have been a good human interest story on a local landmark.
I notice that since then they are being a lot more selective on what they will allow comments on. For example comments were disabled for the story on the Natalie Barney historic marker at Cooper Park. There are other examples.
In a way I guess the DDN comments permits one to see below the polite “Midwest nice” veneer of Daytonians to the dark id of our community…where Daytonians tells us what they really think.
@Jeff
They aren’t allowing comments on Rashad Young’s leaving.
You know where that would go.
BTW, your comments are up in the queque again. Not too much intelligence on that string, though. Just the usual McHat/union/Democrat bashing.
I’m not in favor of censoring, but using the story on St Mary’s Church on Xenia Ave as an example, if a comment wasn’t related to the church’s building or the efforts involved or details related to it, they should be deleted.
Now, if the DDN were to allow comments on Young possibly leaving and someone posted a comment that Young doesn’t answer his phone, respond to voice mails or e-mails, and so on (I made those up as examples — I have no idea if he does or doesn’t) and the DDN deletes those, that’s wrong.
The sun rises and sets with a regularity so precise we literally set our clocks by it. But even more precise is the daily launch of the Ice Bandit’s blistering missives to the Dayton Daily News. And to their credit, they have never censored the excoriations. There. Said something nice about the DDN. May not happen again…..
News sites sometimes have a pretty severe lag in posting comments. I know firsthand many newspaper websites approve each and every comment that comes in, attempting to stop any racist or offensive posts from going live. And if an article is likely to be controversial, it’s even more clorely moderated.
Dave F – Comment Champ @ TheNewsJunkie.com