The New York Times Loves Some Readers More Than Others

Yesterday, the Gray Lady proudly announced an ill-conceived, totally off-the-wall, and most importantly, profoundly anti-democratic change to its readers’ comments policy. Along with altering the appearance of the comments (a comment begins, but “Read More” shows up after only a few lines, requiring many clicks to read through all the comments), and finally introducing a thread where readers respond to one another (like we have here at Brainstorm), the Times is now dividing its commenters into two types. Are you ready, Brainstorm commenters—you who are privileged to post under a pseudonym and are free to say what you want (well, more or less—so long as you steer clear of threats or profanity)? Commenters at The New York Times will be divided into two classes: “Trusted Commenters”—(do you like that?) a status “offered by invitation only” to those whose comments, over time, the paper deems to be of high quality—and everybody else.

While “trusted commenters” get to see their comments show up immediately, everybody else (aka the proles) will have to wait for the Times moderator to approve what they say (from experience, I know this can take several hours).

The Times‘s new policy works like this. You receive an invitation to become a “Trusted Commenter” (presumably the invite arrives as an email) because you have proven your “lengthy history of comments that are thoughtful” and shown that you “know how to discuss the issues politely and address the topics covered in the article or blog post.” If you want to join the club, you then must connect your Times commenting profile to a Facebook account. After that, you need to “complete the Trusted Commenter sign up” (dunno what that means, but maybe it includes a thumbprint).

Let me count the ways this is awful. First, you need to be a Facebook user to even consider signing up for becoming a T.C. Since it’s mostly younger readers using Facebook, this effectively leaves out many older people who never joined Facebook. Second, whatever profile you use on your Facebook account will now show up on your TC comment. So if you think it’s funny for your friends to see a bunny rabbit as your photo, that’s what will accompany your dignified response to some columnist’s discussion of the obesity problem among the young. Third, readers of comments will effectively climb onto a train where they see riders divided into first class and steerage. What a dreary ride.

This cheerful news came from Jill Abramson, the first woman executive editor the Times has ever hired. What was she thinking? You don’t need a focus group to tell you that a comments section in a paper or a blog is a conversation among equals. The Times’s decision is just as if one were to hold a dinner party where the host went around and tapped the shoulders of some of the guests and said, “Kindly wait your turn to speak until the people I like best, to whom I’ve given those shiny gold crowns you see them wearing on their heads, have spoken.”

This is exactly like the time when Coke tried the new Coke and then had to humbly crawl back to retrieve the old Coke. The New York Times should immediately chuck this elitist maneuver and pretend it never happened.