The Disappearing News Media Comment Sections

As the former director of community for HuffPost, where he led the management of an active, massive comment section, Tim McDonald has had a unique vantage point to the mass closure of news media comment sections. Patrick and Tim go in depth on that topic on this episode.

Toward the end, Tim shares what he believes will be his greatest community ROI story: He has stage IV colon cancer and is in need of a liver donor and could get a lot closer with your help.  Please visit TimsLiver.com for more info.

Plus:

• Why Tim believes he doesn’t make a good soccer referee – or content moderator
• Keeping track of your community wins – both qualitative and quantitative
• Leveraging relationships with influential community members to get your message across, rather than being the face of the community yourself

Our Podcast is Made Possible By…

If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

You can’t make everyone happy in moderation (10:56): “I would hate it when there was a close call [as a soccer referee] because I knew in my head what the call was but I knew if I looked at it objectively from one team’s viewpoint and from the other team’s viewpoint, half were going to be happy with me, half were going to be upset with me, and I wanted to make everybody happy. You can’t do that in comment moderation, and you can’t do that being a referee.” –@tamcdonald

Allowing influential members to do the talking (11:34): “I didn’t need to get into the [HuffPost] community and be the face of the community. I could just have relationships with about a dozen of our community members who were very well respected and let them do the talking. But in exchange, I would take phone calls from them at home, at night, on the weekends. I would listen to them, I would understand what they were going through, but I would also be able to convey what, from a company standpoint, we were trying to achieve. When I did that, they started understanding.” –@tamcdonald

If we aren’t going to invest in it, why spend so much effort? (19:08): “My very last day [at HuffPost was] when we pushed the button and [switched to Facebook Comments]. Everybody looked at me like I was crazy, but I just told everybody, ‘I’ve come up with solutions. I’ve come up with options. Nobody wants to pay for this. If we can’t invest in it, and we’re not willing to invest in it, and we’re not going to generate any revenue off of it, why are we supporting it?’ That was the end of it. Obviously, they still had comments. They still do have comments, but it’s nothing to what it was back when I was at HuffPost.” –@tamcdonald

Document your community wins (22:53): “The subscriber growth of The New York Times is often cited … by media folks and executives as an example of the D2C model, but I think people would do well to remember that The New York Times never closed their comments. … People want that success of, ‘Look at all the people they have paying for news,’ but they don’t necessarily want to do that work that is moderating comments for 20 years to build a section that is befitting of The New York