Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:09:31 -0000

Those are both excellent questions, Bernie -- I am still in the process of finding answers :-)

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

bernieschmidt — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:52:27 -0000

Hi Matthew, how can we help you be successful, and how do you see "success" being defined at this stage?

regards, bernie

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:22:08 -0000

Thanks, Tom. I am already thinking about trying to "put meat around this idea of community," as you put it. As for your comment not appearing, we don't manually moderate comments before they appear at all -- we simply don't have the manpower -- so there was likely some kind of glitch that prevented your comment from showing up. That occasionally happens.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Tom — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:46:07 -0000

A follow-on to my recent comment:

Today I posted a comment to the auto bail-out story as a test. I mainly wanted to pass along a link to a video of a panel of economists speaking on "What is Capitalism Good For." I believe that what I wrote is beyond any stretch of breaking the moderation rules and was relevant to the subject. My post has not appeared.

It might be good to think of what kind of community exists if an anonymous force decides who gets to speak and decides what everybody else gets to read. Such things seem the roles of parents. If members of a group are deprived of their own adulthood of deciding what they wish to witness or ignore, what is the nature of community? It might also be good to think of the role of the media in supposedly free societies. Is there a watershed between role and entertainment, for example.

Basically, the effect of how the forums work at present is aa a community of exchange bounded by anonymous censorship. Talk forums that have endured do not work like this. The moderation on these forums is visible and highly so. The forums take responsibility for their censorship. Something that is written is posted and then censored. A form of community seems possible. It might be good realize that no discussion is possible without censorship but community as we think of it may be compromised if Censorship is not visible. It might be good to think about what is the purpose of the Censorship here.

But, in my comment I am again only practicing to generate my own version of content. Any change that might happen in the forum is now too late for me. There are too many places where I can practice within the bounds of civility, post my stuff and be left to be read or ignored by the other members at their discretions.

My view is that we have in our culture an agonizing flood of information but a crisis of meaning. The writer, van der Post, wrote much the same over 30 years ago, and also said that we have kept the Descartes but thrown away the Pascal in our modern culture. Perhaps that is why meaning remains a scarce, precious and hoarded commodity today. Katherine Weymouth said much the same thing recently during an Aspen Institute forum.

We drown in information. News events are information. Opinions and attitude are information. Most media communications and especially advertising, is information. Information is what we protect ourselves from in modern times. We talk directly to each other as peers in communities. Sometimes in communities we might find some meaning that goes a bit beyond ourselves. Such meaning could be called content. It is the stuff of community.

As you can see, I am entirely self-indulgent and inclined toward the fruitcake, and now I am out of here. The business model performs admirably.

You might think about trying to put some meat around this idea of community. Regards.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:07:29 -0000

Thanks, Tom. Those are some good points, and many of the things you're suggesting are things we are already thinking hard about. I appreciate your input.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Tom — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:19:52 -0000

I watched Katherine Weymouth's panel presentation on media business, content, old and new technology etc. from The Aspen Institute. It might be a good things to watch if you haven't done so already. I watched it on a HD TV and received it through ITunes. The questions after her presentations seem equivalent to the G&M comments pages. Increasingly, I'm finding that both the presentation and the questions available to me from such forums have superior content to what I find in G&M stories, and certainly to the comments. It seems ironic is that I'm getting better news analysis content through ITunes than from a national newspaper.

Through ITunes, I subscribe to CUNY lectures, FORATV, The Institute for Ideas and The Aspen Institute. I'm looking for other sources in and out of ITunes. I go to these forums, and each forum gives me direct access to analysis of topical issues from internationally recognized persons. Persons who pose questions also tend to have genuine credentials.

Some problems with what you're trying to do that I see are:

The newspaper isn't delivering the best content for either fast breaking news or analysis.
Comments to news stories, especially with heavy anonymous moderating, is not an adequate basis for community (On other forums everybody knows when moderators have deleted a post or thread or banned a member).
The moderation standards have the effect of dumbing-down comments. Quoting sources seems to trigger filters, while making obviously false or unsupported assertions is prohibited under the rules. It's a catch-22.
Active comments sections to stories frequently are suspended with no explanation and restarted without the original comments. The site continues to accept comments during suspension, which do not subsequently posted.
I'll stop here.

Of course, it is often difficult to fit quality content into a space of 2,000 characters for a complex subject, However, the effect of comment management does seem to further reduce content and leave comments that are mainly sloganizing, ideological ranting and personal slagging. Myself, I don't write to interact or receive feedback. I mostly write to practice generating content--within my abilities and talents, for better or worse and I know my on-screen proofing is horrible. I don't expect my comments to be posted, but I do need to find interesting things to think about.

Increasingly, I'm not finding many things of interest in either the stories or the comments, and the overall nature of the comments seem unattractive as a community. I'm coming to think of the comments as similar to the radio talk show buz (a variation on a carnival freak-show, according to a newsman friend). Cynically, I wonder if the comments work they way they do so as to maximize site traffic, and therefore advertising revenue. The fact that I could think of such a thing is perhaps more telling than the truth of it. Rightly or wrongly, seem to be feeling a bit manipulated and so I'm picking at things and in the process I found alternatives that seem more interesting.

But really, it all goes back to content. If you start with a content empty story, such as Flaherty's Panic blurb in today's Business Section, how does anybody expect that comments to such as story will be anything but what they are. Taking such stories and comments together, there seems little content and little interest. thee also seems little community feeling except perhaps for ideologues and the socially bewildered. Unfortunately, I am describing how the G&M is coming to be branded for me.

I don't know. Good luck with what you're trying to do.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:31:47 -0000

Thanks, Jim. Unfortunately, we get so many submissions -- thousands every day -- that there's no real way to check names and addresses. That's why we rely on our readers to call the really egregious ones to our attention.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Jim Kelly — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:20:45 -0000

Matthew,

Your new role sounds exciting, but also important to the discussions which take place so vigorously at the Globe.

Tell me, is there any way to have email submissions checked for name and location? Some people make up ridiculous names and places, and even though their comments seem interesting and sincere, we have no way to know if they are being upfront.

peace,

Jim Kelly
M'Chigeeng, ON

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Jaafer Haidar — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:32:06 -0000

Congrats Mathew! It'll be a challenge and a great opportunity to make an impact! We've been talking to a few news clients about how to "get their content moving" and found that it works best to introduce easily integrated tools and build toward a totally engaging experience.

Best of luck!

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:29:31 -0000

Thanks, Blaise.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Blaise Alleyne — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:05:19 -0000

Congrats! I'm excited to see what you'll be able to accomplish!

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:33:23 -0000

Thanks a lot, Michael. I'm going to need it :-)

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Michael Seaton — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:13:12 -0000

Well deserved Matthew. You have been a driving force within the changing face of journalism and this is great validation that The Globe gets it. May the force be with you in this new role.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:52:17 -0000

Thanks, Doug.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

dcress — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:36:36 -0000

Belated congratulations Matthew. As a longtime fan of your analysis of all things web, I think you're ideally suited to the position.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:22:33 -0000

Thanks, Sutha.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:22:14 -0000

Thanks, Robert.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:21:56 -0000

Thanks, Mike.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

suthakamal — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:08:57 -0000

Congrats and best of luck on the new gig Mathew... they couldn't have picked a better guy for the job.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

pacificIT — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:37:04 -0000

Cool. Good luck Matthew. Go Canada!

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Mike McDerment — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:28:21 -0000

Congrats again Mathew!

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:28:57 -0000

Thanks a lot, Leila.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Leila Boujnane — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:48:59 -0000

This is very exciting. And about time? No? No doubt you will do awesome. Looking forward to it. Bonne chance (but you won't need it!).

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

mathewi — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:14:16 -0000

Thanks, Jodi.

Re: Personal note: A job change for yours truly

Jodi Echakowitz — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:07:30 -0000

Congrats on the promotion! Your new role sounds like it may just be another first for a North American paper.