Slashdot Mirror
Washington Post Shuts Down Blog
Billosaur writes "C|Net has an article by Katharine Q. Seelye of The New York Times, which indicates that the Washington Post is having to close one of its blogs, due to 'too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman.' It seems that Deborah Howell, the newspaper's ombudsman, wrote an article on the Jack Abramoff scandal which elicited a storm of protest and led to readers using profanity and making unprintable comments, which the paper had to take extra care in removing. This was apparently more based on the issue at hand, as the Post's other blogs have not experienced similar problems." What kind of precedent does this set for other mainstream news sites? What we'd consider a normal day around here has to look fairly intimidating to the average newspaper editor. Will this dissuade news sites from blogging in the future?
If the much vaunted "future" means replacing reasoned debate with over-the-top personal attacks, threats, and senseless profanity, then I for one certainly will miss the "old guard".[1] Your acceptance of such adolescent behaviour points to an ugly and ill-informed future indeed. [1] Of course, there is very little actual political debate within traditional media as well, but let's not fool ourselves about what "new media" has accomplished.