Here’s a involved-party communication on the matter from the paper’s social media editor.

The basics: A user posted a vulgar comment. The site moderators delete it. Dumb user doesn’t get the non-verbal message, reposts the same vulgar comment. The site moderators delete it.

OK, so far nothing abnormal. Every site that allows commenting deals with that type of idiocy on a regular basis, including.

Here’s where things deviate from the norm. The St. Louis paper staff notes the IP address (this particular comment is on WordPress, which does mark down IPs) is from a particular school. The paper then calls the school, who decided to check into it. Their IT staff eventually tracks down the staffers, who supposedly resigns “on the spot” when confronted.

In what should be the biggest non-surprise of the century, the comments on the blog, and the spread of the story to other blogs such as Ars Technica is pretty strongly leaning toward “What in the blue hell were you thinking?”

And that’s the direction I lean toward.

Let’s be brutally honest, in this line of work, you do come across some people in the community who will use the anonymity of this Web site to be complete jackasses.

But it’s my job to just maintain and control order on this Web site, not enforce a personal moral code across two counties. It’s not my job to make sure employers know what their employees are doing at work. That’s up to the employer to decide how to best deal with those issues.

Are there temptations to “bust” somebody? Yeah, I’ve had them. I’ve seen user accounts traceable to political candidates try and rip on their opponents in story comments. I’ve seen people be jerks online, then raise their hands acting all holy in the same sanctuary I’m in on Sundays.

But, it’s my personal belief that I should fight for the privacy and protection of all our users, not just the ones I like.

And whether the challenge to that comes from the government, the courts or my own temper shouldn’t matter.

That’s just me.

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As the votes are showing, it’s pretty much a dead heat. At least at the time of this post.

You see this issue flare up at various points around the nation from time to time. The catalyst for the current discussion going on in Redding is that a spokesperson for the building industry up in that neck of the woods has said he will no longer give comments to the local paper because it allows users to comment using online handles other than their real name.

Comments, like virtually everything that comes with journalism on the Web, is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you get the raw, emotional dialogue that newspapers should be generating. On the other hand, people use anonymity to abdicate any sense of decency or putting thought into what they type.

Of course, a story like this also gives me an easy opportunity to use this old line: What you think about this? Let me know.

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But, since I made that post, Live Oak Vice Mayor Rob Klotz fanned us.

Oh, and we’re up to 413. Join up, all the cool kids are.

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Hi, guys. Keep reading.

So, I figured I’d try and keep this gravy train of traffic rolling a little and take an little quick inventory of the big local boards and see what we come up with.

How many members of local boards did I find on Facebook?

*3 Yuba City Council members
*2 Sutter County Supervisors
*2 Live Oak City Council members
*1 Yuba County Supervisor
*Possibly 1 Wheatland City Council member
*Nobody from the Marysville City Council

And I’m going to guilt trip them all for one thing: Several of them have fanned a local publication of religious nature that I have no qualms about, but none — that’s right, none — have yet to fan the Appeal-Democrat. For shame!

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The term: Subscriber enhancements.

You take it from here.

(credit to somebody else in the newsroom for the title inspiration)

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I felt special…until I learned he’d also sent out invites to my editor and pretty much everybody else in the Appeal-Democrat newsroom and probably other newsrooms in the district. Heck, even my youth pastor got an invite.

Now is also the time to note Keene plans to run for state Senate next year.

In the past week, local politicians seem to have really ramped up their involvement with their Facebook accounts in preparation for the primaries just eight short months away (yeah, already. Scary, huh?).

In Keene’s case, by looking at his Wall — the page that gives a look at all of his various activity on the site — he looks to have been fairly quiet for about a month or so until his recent friending bonanza.

And with a quick look around Facebook using some name searches, Keene isn’t alone in creating some sort of unofficial start to Facebook political season, if there was ever really an end to the last one.

Keene’s primary opposition for the Republican nomination, which around these parts is basically the election, is fellow former Assemblyman Doug LaMalfa. Quick note: I’ve been Facebook friends with Doug for several months now, which I don’t really consider a ethical faux pas since LaMalfa isn’t actually an elected official at the moment (once he officially files as a candidate, though, that’s a different story).

But a look at LaMalfa shows has been busy on Facebook as well, adding quite a few friends (he’s up to 1,891, Keene switched out his full list of friends for the popular “We’re Related” application) and fanning virtually every possible fan page in the district. He’s fanned 204 items as of this posting, including the Redding Air Show, the Siskiyou County Farm Bureau (not that I, as a Siskiyou County native, will have anything bad to say about that) and the FFA club at West Valley High School, near Cottonwood.

What about the man Keene and LaMalfa are looking to take over for, termed-out Senator Sam Aanestad? He’s looking for a higher office as well in lieutenant governor. And he’s been getting active on Facebook as well. Aanestad’s added no less than 150 friends in recent days, bringing his total number of friends as of this posting to 1,448. Still catching up is the Facebook group for his 2010 gubernatorial run, which currently has 86 members.

Facebook: If it wasn’t an political climate tester in ‘08, it’s going to be in ‘10.

Blast from the past: Slate “monitored” Obama’s first 100 days through his Facebook wall. Naughty language warning, so no whining.

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I can tell you that 1) We haven’t been told much about how it’s been going for them and 2) Also haven’t been told of any plans to change our offerings at appealdemocrat.com.

But, the pay walls are coming closer to Marysville. In this case, about 40 miles away.

Editor & Publisher is reporting MediaNews Group is the latest company that will give a pay wall a try at two of its non-metro paper of records in the first quarter of 2010. And one of those two papers will be the Chico Enterprise-Record.

(Disclaimers here: Formerly worked for another MNG paper, the Paradise Post, back when it was more of a competitive philosophy with Chico instead of story-sharing. I have former college classmates who currently or formerly worked for the Chico ER. My aunt is the editor of a different MNG paper in Northern California, and my uncle is the assistant sports editor)

MNG’s pay wall will be a “partial” pay wall, which means not everything that goes on the site will be behind the wall. And the folks at MNG haven’t announced what’s going to be behind the wall in Chico or the other paper taking part in this in York, Penn. But it’s likely, much like the Freedom pay walls, the items going behind will be the items which generate the most traffic: Local news, opinion, business and columnists. I’d vote the most likely feature to not go behind a pay wall to be the obituaries.

Once again, it will be interesting to see how this ultimately plays out. Personally, I was a fan of MNG’s traditional setup of having fresh content free and charging for access to online archives, since I believe traditionally newspapers’ true long-term value to society is in its position as a historical archive and we have more leverage to charge for access to that particular value. As much as I have an extreme dislike of many of the ways Dean Singleton and Co. run the print side of their operations, I’ve never had a ton of complaints of what they’ve been saying as far as generating revenue online.

The last line of the E&P story:

But Singleton stressed that an all-pay model is unlikely and that each newspaper will have to determine what is best to charge for among its own content. “It will not be a cookie-cutter approach,” he said.

I can’t disagree with that.

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Isn’t that a little unkosher, though? I mean, in capitalism, it’s all up to the people making the product to figure out what the customer wants and the customer just buys it, right?

Not necessarily. Good businesses do listen to their customers, but also know that they have to make sure their customers are willing to make such statements at times other than when they’re annoyed. It’s easy to get people to talk about stuff that ticks them off, but a lot tougher to get feedback from the more lukewarm about a product. And it’s the lukewarm people that can probably help the newspaper business best, not the loudmouths.

And newspapers are a private business, but a unique private business in that our job isn’t always about making the customers happy. You should be readying things that make you happy, sad, hopeful, frustrated, motivated, or even angry. It’s not a pretty world out there, and we should be showing you the world as it is, not the world that will make you feel good.

So, here’s what you can do:

Let us experiement, and screw up: Seriously. Falling flat on our faces a few times can be a good thing. When an industry is in upheaval (which, because the ad revenue from print didn’t jump over to online, the newspaper industry is) the best thing we can be doing right now is trying some absolutely wacky stuff, stuff that would have even been unheard of in newspapers even five years ago. Who ever thought having a newspaper guy, for example, freeze his hands solid during a Marysville-Lindhurst section title game to type out what was happening in real time would be a hit? Since when would an in-depth look at a ballot measure include an accompanying 10-minute Q&A online video? We’ve done both, and more, in the past 18 months.

Yet many in newsrooms are afraid of such experimentation, because we’re afraid that if we try something, and it doesn’t work, readers are going to jump down our throats. Newspaper readers are, in case you didn’t know, notorious for being change-resistant. Good example: I just looked at an Appeal-Democrat from 1939, and there was “Blondie.” We still run Prince Valiant on Sundays, for crying out loud. Prince Freakin’ Valiant. So, be open to us trying something different and a little screwy by your standards, and don’t get the scream meter cranked up right away if it doesn’t work. Eventually, we might strike journalism oil.

Use the quick feedback tools: Comment on stories (civilly). Hit “recommends” on the stories you like. E-mail stories you like to friends. E-mail the reporters (civilly). Submit story tips online. There’s a lot of stuff out there for you to use. Use it.

Don’t assume we know it already: I sometimes get this conception that people believe reporters have crystal balls on their desks, right next to the telephone and the flask. Well, it’s not true. The crystal ball is in the repair shop, and we have to hide the flasks in our desks now.

But seriously, journalists don’t get as much special access and privileges as people might think. Most special rights for journalists these days come not before a story, but after in the form of shield laws. So, if you have an idea, feel free to let us know. Even if we already know about it, most of us will still give thanks and appreciation for being willing to call and make sure we knew. And, if we didn’t know, then you’ve gotten to live out that Deep Throat dream you’ve always had. Yeah, you know you’ve had it.

Those are the three main things I think of. You can take part in idea #2 by commenting with your thoughts and extra suggestions.

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That is what Columbus Dispatch editor Benjamin J. Marrison said consultants brought in to beef up that publication’s Web sites told him. Here’s an excerpt from his Sunday column:

They said Internet readers want to be part of the reporting process. The consultants continued: Online news consumers don’t mind if your initial report is inaccurate. They just want it first. Online readers know that, over time, the truth will come out.

As Marrison demonstrates in the rest of his column, that’s pretty much the exact polar opposite of newspaper philosophy, which is generally described as “Get it first, but first get it right.”

If the theory among readers is, in fact, “Get it first, screw everything else,” it would give some insight as to why there’s such a struggle with this whole evolving-for-the-Web thing.

Honestly, I don’t like it much, either. I still think of assignments given in Chico State’s J-school intentionally designed for you to fail because of the hard line taken on minor fact errors. But think about it, haven’t you ever found it hard to wrap around your head that society would be so flippant about something you generally lean your professional reputation on?

But, let’s throw it out there anyway: Do you considering yourself to be primarily a print or online reader, and is having a story first or accurate more important to you? (and more importantly, where you’ll spend money on news)

Found this through Larry Sparks of the Omaha World-Herald via Mandy Jenkins of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

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More specifically, it was Jennifer Ferguson’s US profile of 19-year-old Marco Pedraza of Williams in June.

Here’s the link to the full episode video. The clipping makes its appearance right before the 40-minute mark.

I was told about this by Green Girl Ashley Gebb. Maybe she was busy sorting her recyclables or something. Kidding, Ashley.

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