On News, Communities and Journalists

More essential reading for Saturday morning (time for a second cuppa), this time about the relationship between news and online communities:

Our comments routinely point us in the direction of new angles for stories, and in many cases commenters have become sources for future pieces. They do fact-checking for us, which we should be grateful for. And they let us know which stories they care about and which they don’t, which is invaluable market research. But those aren’t the only reasons why comments are important. Giving people a place to talk about important issues has value in and of itself, and the more we restrict that and impose limits on it, the more we risk losing the trust of the people formerly known as the audience.