Userkommentare: In den sauren Apfel beissen!

Zurzeit findet an der Harvard University die Jahreskonferenz der Organization of News Ombudsmen statt, an der am Montag u.a. auch «Guardian»-Chefredaktor Alan Rusbridger auftrat.

Auf die Frage, wie seine Mitarbeiter denn mit der Flut an Userkommentaren umgingen, antwortete Rusbridger (via «buzzmachine.com»):

«[R]eporters will have to get used to it; it is all out there anyway and they can come in in the morning and check Technorati for what is being said about their work. Reporters are just going to have to grow up and like big boys and girls take it on the chin [take it on the chin = etwas mit Fassung tragen].»

Zuvor hatte Rusbridger in seinem Konferenzbeitrag (PDF, 100KB) dazu u.a. gemeint:

«What all this points to is a new age in which the old model – we [i.e. die Journalisten] pushed the stuff out and took little notice of the response – is over. You would have to be a very unobservant journalist these days not to see that the entrails of mainstream journalism are picked over by millions of bloggers – at the last count Technorati claimed to be monitoring 71 million individual weblogs – on an hourly basis.

In a sense this is comforting: it shows that what we do – and what we write – still matters and continues to stir up emotions, debate and controversies. But I think it will be increasingly odd if raging debates about newspapers exist purely in a digital space, with not a word of it being allowed into print.»

Update: Mehr zu den Userkommentaren auf der Website des «Guardian» weiss Ombudsfrau Siobhain Butterworth (Artikel registrierungspflichtig) zu berichten.