Confessions of an After-Article Reader....

[taglines]

The After-Article. It's a new journalism term coined for the comments that now often follow a published news article on a news website or a forum such as this one.

In the old days, circa 1850 to 1999, before After-Articles became common, a news article or feature story would appear in, say, the New York Times or the LA Times or the Boston Globe or the Guardian in London, and if a reader wanted to contact the author of the article or the editor of the newspaper to comment on the story pro or con, he or she had to write a letter and send it in by snailmail or email and wait for a response. Most letters never received a reply or a response. Sometimes the author did reply. It took weeks, months.


Fast foward to 2010. Now many news articles and opeds and feature stories -- longform journalism -- in the New York Times and other newspapers have a comment section following the online publication of the story and readers can write in immediately and voice their opinions or make their feelings known one way or another, pro or con. Some comment sections print 10 - 25 comments, some as many as 500 or 800.


And reading the comment sections -- what some editors now refer to as THE AFTER-ARTICLE -- often is more interesting and enlightening and rewarding to the reader than the original article. Or as interesting. Or both combined make up a new kind of reading experience. I feel it mirrors the new realities of online journalism. And it's good!

True or not?

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by taglines

And reading the comment sections -- what some editors now refer to as THE AFTER-ARTICLE -- often is more interesting and enlightening and rewarding to the reader than the original article. Or as interesting. Or both combined make up a new kind of reading experience. I feel it mirrors the new realities of online journalism. And it's good!

True or not?

Sometimes, yes. However, the comments sections of most news sites seem to rapidly descend into a mess of trolling, name-calling, and locked-in arguments where nobody listens to each other...hardly enlightening.

[taglines]

Originally Posted by bwaldron

Sometimes, yes. However, the comments sections of most news sites seem to rapidly descend into a mess of trolling, name-calling, and locked-in arguments where nobody listens to each other...hardly enlightening.

True. But at the NYTimes, where i just read a good article on solastalgia in the Sunday magazine online, the 85 plus comments were even more interesting or as interesting as the article itself. The Times hires paid mods to keep everyone in line. more sites should follow this. in the future, i think a new etiquette and formula for after-articles will emerge. maybe?