Effective Aug. 23, National Public Radio (NPR) is removing the “Comment” function from stories on its website.
NPR cited the cost of outside-platform Disqus, weighed against the concentration of commenting among a “very, very small slice of its overall audience.”
In her recent column, NPR Ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen addresses relevant issues about how this will affect reader engagement.
Having been “trolled” via a third-party platform that permitted anonymous commenting, I am concerned by the decline in civility to which online comment threads can degenerate.
I won’t miss commenting on the website.
But will relying on social media be enough to “pick up the slack” when only a portion of NPR stories are posted to its Facebook page? And what about users who don’t want a social presence?
I hope this and any further modifications to NPR feedback avenues are always done with an aim for promoting reader engagement.
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