Unfortunately our editor's response to everything is "it's a staffing problem."
Our newsroom, if you want to call it that, spends most of the day re-writing (fluffing) press releases to get a paper out the next day.
Corporate has our system lock down, we don't have access to our database tables and responses to feature requests, like comment promotion, are usually..."We'll bring that up in a meeting."
In my opinion people tend to feed their ego behind a keyboard. A lot of people bite their tongue in face to face conversations, only a few will speak out and make their opinions heard.
Maybe some kind of pay-wall for us would be a possible tool against trolling.
You should be able to leverage trust and quality recognition within your own userbase. If you can't find trusted users to seed the comment moderation system, well, you've got other issues as well.
But if the site's founders/leaders can start federating trust at least to the extent of promoting/muting content, then it most certainly isn't a staffing problem, beyond coding the necessary algorithms.
We have a report abuse button that is attached to each comment, all our users have to do is click it and it sends an email to the appropriate person for moderation. (This is rarely used unfortunately)
To be honest I don't agree with a lot of the decisions corporate makes in regards to our digital efforts. They are on the other side of the country and believe that if it works in their market it has to work in ours.
It constantly feels like we are playing catch-up to everyone else.
I keenly understand the situation you are in as a former journalist myself. The simple fact of the matter is that such a significant generational divide exists in the newsroom, coupled with an underlying hatred from the old-guard for how their profession has been forced to adapt, that I completely gave up any hope of change.
I was not going to change the editors mind who believed IT took care of itself and most of it was just 'magic' -- that outsourcing tech to a low-cost vendor who provided no follow up support or update would ultimately doom the product -- and that ultimately the product of 'News' was more about the medium of tech than the news itself.
If they can't read it, you aren't making money. I was tired of skeptical questions and blank stares from managing editors who laughed at the idea of 'reading news on your phone' and thought 'code monkeys' didn't really understand the news and should stay in the basement while the experienced journalists did the real work.
I've consulted National Geographic, CNN, the New York Times, and several others about their digital futures and I have never met clients that were so stubborn, confused, and self-desceptive in my life. The one that took the cake of course was National Geographic, who refused to believe that video would supplant a large portion of their photographic work in the coming years. They also stated that they did not believe people would want to consume 'low resolution' images on a screen compared to their quality printing process.
The NYT built my idea, which became TimesCast -- kudos for that. And CNN generally stays on top of most things from an IT perspective.
It is very frustrating to have to deal with these types of attitudes.
My supervisor was around when this paper got their website up and running (late 90's) and he remembers people around here saying that the internet was just a fad it was never going to catch on. Fast forward to today and most of them are scrambling trying to figure out what to do.
Our newsroom, if you want to call it that, spends most of the day re-writing (fluffing) press releases to get a paper out the next day.
Corporate has our system lock down, we don't have access to our database tables and responses to feature requests, like comment promotion, are usually..."We'll bring that up in a meeting."
In my opinion people tend to feed their ego behind a keyboard. A lot of people bite their tongue in face to face conversations, only a few will speak out and make their opinions heard.
Maybe some kind of pay-wall for us would be a possible tool against trolling.
Thank you for your reply.