Reporting the Community Beat: Practices for Moderating Online Discussion at a News Website

Video

DOI

Due to challenges around low-quality comments and misinformation, many news outlets have opted to turn off commenting features on their websites. The New York Times (NYT), on the other hand, has continued to scale up its online discussion resources to reach large audiences. Through interviews with the NYT moderation team, we present examples of how moderators manage the first ~24-hours of online discussion after a story breaks, while balancing concerns about reporting credibility. We discuss how managing comments at the NYT is not merely a matter of content regulation, but can involve reporting from the "community beat" to recognize emerging topics and synthesize the multiple perspectives in a discussion to promote community. We discuss how other news organizations, including those lacking moderation resources, might appropriate the strategies and decisions offered by the NYT. Future research might investigate strategies to share and update moderation resources around articles and topics.