Censoring online comments is fine and all but don't do it under the guise of picking out "intelligent" comments vs. stupid ones. Invariably people consider anyone who disagrees with them, especially in a manner which is utterly destructive of their point, to be "stupid". Censorship is censorship - just a call a spade a spade. Gawker is just about the worst - every commenter has to be "approved" and whenever I log in to comment, if only to correct a simple factual inaccuracy, it's never published if it's antagonistic to the blogger's view.

I don't have cookies enabled on my browser. Does that throw off the count of unique vs. total visits to a site?

The largest media outlets can no longer immunize themselves from comment or scrutiny. Yesterday's Times claptrap from Efraim Karsh is a perfect example. The Times barred comment and will likely not carry any very critical letters (the Times almost never does tolerate criticism). But within hours, James Zogby and many others had incisive criticism widely circulated on the net.

Yeah Right Gawker. Regarding your love for commenters you guys are the worst. You may screen commenters for intelligence but you also ban commenters when they express valid intelligent opinions that conflict with your advertisers interests.

Third party registration that Sree is discussing is a sham...all you have to do is create a fake identity on Goggle gmail and log onto a news site to spout your nonsense.

I think people are skeptical about linking their third-party ID and having their browsing and commenting linked to that ID.

The website journalist that says the comments are a summary of public opinion is way off the mark and he knows it. Comments have largely become a bully pulpit for people with grievances, bad spelling and nothing better to do.
I am actually busy packing for a trip ( I am news correspondent) but his disingenuous remark made me pause. And the cash reward for traffic is an utter disgrace.

With respect to comments, it is also interesting when a news outlet bars comments. The New York Times is notably selective in which articles and essays allow comments and which do not. The reasons sometimes seem pretty clear. Tom Friedman -- the archetype of stating the obvious badly and the false badly -- is an example of one who bars comments. Yesterday's deplorable essay by Efraim Karsh is another good example of an essay barring comment.

Comments on local newspapers are a disaster...racist, repetitive, and reductive.

Instead of using the web for speed, many newspapers are using the web to do micro-reporting on tiny communities and towns. They've pulled back their suburban reporters and are using "citizen journalists" to fill those pages.

Do journalists feel pressured to write to an audience to get numbers or 'hits", as opposed to simply reporting news? And how does that affect their reporting?

In light of things like hit counts and links, I wonder if reporters feel pressured to write more sensational stories in order to gain more attention and rise above the fray.

If workers get burned out, do readers also get fatigued? Is it possible to track when individual users get tired of a story?

There are people who manage search engine optimization...the reporter can make a suggestion, but the manager of SEO knows how to update that information in response to what people are using as search terms and put it into the overall context of coverage.

When reporting gossip, like Gawker, it makes sense that the reporting should be as fast as possible but with hard news this report it and correct it later attitude is lessening the credibility of the news. The ability to correct a story so quickly may actually have made the news more accurate than it ever has been but something is being lost in this need for speed. Questioning everything has become more and more important in this day and age.

"Flexible" work patterns and hyper productivity is common to the globalized work force of the 21st century. It's now in full force with the HuffPo and POLITICO news delivery model.

The worst thing about online news is that, for the most part, there is no page design and everything is delivered in the same (shrieking) tone.

The pages are formatted to make it easier to swap out ads, but the unintended consequence of that is the sites become visually stale.