Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

comments on newspaper web sites
percent newspapers that allow comments
"percent of newspapers" that "allow comments"

One-third of newspapers allow comments:
bivingsreport.com/2007/american-newspapers-and-the-internet-threat-or-opportunity/

(But Bivings didn't know how to develop a Drupal web site -- we took over one of theirs, we know! -- so they have no credibility with Agaric, heh.)

Exact same number from a different source?

Finally, 33% of these sites allowed readers to make comments on news articles, up from 19% in 2006 (The State, 2008).

2007 State of the Media report (or a poorly cited reference to the same report in "Transforming the News: The Impact of Leadership and Organizational Factors on the Adoption and Use of Interactive Elements on Newspaper Web Sites" by Kristoffer D. Boyle, B.A., M.A., A Dissertation In MASS COMMUNICATIONS Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, Approved - http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-07112008-135326/unrestricted...)

Indymedia's formation in 1999 by media activists involved in opposing undemocratic international economic policy-making bodies with the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle:

Before the J18 protests happened activists in Seattle were preparing for the WTO to come to town. A year of coalition meetings and organizing took place. A small group of people started meeting about the idea of a media center. A group of a dozen people with a core of 4 organizers meet about taking the ideas they had seen elsewhere and help created and using them for the protests. They found a space in downtown seattle which they could use as an office, made contacts with media activists to invite them, and build out the first indymedia center. Their goal was clear. Create a space and environment for media activists from other cities to come, collaborate, and cover the protest and issues. It was not the intention of the organizers to create media themselves, but to make it possible for others to do so.

Over 400 media activists showed up and participated in this media center. The website came online at the last minute and received substantial, for the time, traffic. The protests themselves were a resounding success and that propelled indymedia and it's sister organization at the time, the DAN, the Direct Action Network, forward. Indymedia was a one off event, created as a temporary autonomous zone to cover the protest. But it was created in the context of this larger media movement, with activists who were thinking back to the Zapatistas who said we need to build a resistance communications network. At the height of the chaos there was a meeting at the indymedia center. The police had barricaded the door shut, tear gas was seeping in from the street, activists were crowding the space, some seriously injured by police violence. Jeff Perlstein gave a short speech during the meeting. He said "we are creating something which we hope will be a model for the future," for other places, and other struggles.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/05/25/18253281.php

Other Newspaper Comment Discussion

http://powazek.com/posts/1063