Sunday, the Greeley Tribune turned off article comments on their story for a few weeks:
We’re beginning a test today that will “pause” the reader commenting function on our website. All comments previously posted will be erased and nobody will have the ability to post new comments on stories.
I’m all for experimentation. Telling your loyal commenters that you’ve erased all their previous comments is a sure way to erase that loyalty, however. I don’t know if the Greeley Tribune really did erase all old comments, or, should the Tribune re-activate article comments, if those previous comments would return. That seems worth explaining.
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Popularity: 1% [?]
It’s a chicken shit move by an editor left to pick up the pieces after the Chris Cobler fiasco. He’s been crowing about this for months and now they’ve gone and purged the comments from 7 or 8 years of articles.
Swift, the parent corporation, is doing this to all their papers but they didn’t get on a high horse to parade it around. They know who the problem children are and even named one in an editorial, but I guess it’s just easier to go nuclear on the vast majority who want to speak about the things being editorialized and reported in the Tribune. Look for Greeley Report and Greeley Gazette to increase their traffic and advertising.
The Trib just took a big and potentially costly step backwards.