Standard explains online change

Here’s the response the Montana Standard editor gave to the Montana Cowgirl Blog when she criticized the newspaper’s decision to eliminate anonymous and pseudonyms from online commentary . A commenter named Matthew Koehler thought it was odd that I didn’t post this response with the Montana Cowgirl Blog’s original post. I simply hadn’t seen it. No conspiracy theory here. Also, I still disagree with the newspaper’s policy to reveal the names on previous posts. Big Time:

Dear Cowgirl:

First, sorry to quibble, but this is not a small point — it’s central to the action we took: Your lead is inaccurate. We do not want to “out” anyone retroactively who does not wish to be. That’s why we suggested that anyone uncomfortable with their real name appearing on earlier posts simply email us and we’ll delete those posts.

Once we flip the switch making posts reflect real names rather than user names, our content management system automatically would make the same change on all existing comments in the database. We had two alternatives: eliminate every comment, which we don’t want to do, since many are remembrances on obituaries, for instance; or warn users so they could ask us to specifically delete their comments so they would NOT be “outed.”

While you say lower in the post that we “generously” provided that option, the lead is misleading as written. I like snark as much as the next person, but I like accuracy and fairness more.

Which brings me to the conspiracy theory that this is somehow related to a completely unrelated event — the reprehensible firing of Don Thomas, an excellent outdoor writer I’ve admired since my days editing Big Sky Journal in the early 90s. I can’t for the life of me figure out how anybody could see a connection between these two events and I can’t honestly believe you can either (since there isn’t one.) Pardon, but the whole theory is just loony.

And totally unfair.

We made this change for a simple reason: Many of our customers have complained about anonymous bashing of people in our comments. We believe in transparency, and we believe that people should stand behind their opinions, particularly attacks on others. If you can’t put your name on it, it doesn’t have much credibility. Right, Ms., er, Cowgirl?

Thanks.
–David McCumber
Editor
The Montana Standard