Image courtesy of Flickr user San Diego Shooter

Do anonymous bullies take over your website’s comments? Do you want to get rid of them?

How is your news org handling this stuff? Boston.com tackled the issue with Inside the mind of the anonymous online poster:

… many websites are grappling with right now over what to do with anonymous comments. At many of these sites, executives have begun to ask themselves: How did we get into this thicket, and is there a sensible way out? But a more basic question needs to be answered first: Who are these people who spend so much of their days posting anonymous comments, and what is motivating them?

Newspapers find themselves in a strange position. People wanting to have a letter to the editor printed in the paper have long been required to provide their name, address, and a daytime phone number. Yet on the websites owned by these same newspapers, all it usually takes to be handed a perpetual soapbox is an active e-mail address.

After years of letting anonymity rule online, many media heavyweights, from The Washington Post to The Huffington Post, have begun to modify their policies. The goal is to take the playground back from anonymous bullies and give greater weight to those willing to offer, in addition to strong views, their real names.

Like many, we have an open commenting policy at kpcc.org. What do you do? What’s the biggest downside to putting up more walls?

(Flickr photo courtesy of user Hot Pixel Action!)

The question I wanted to know was, what’s the value of videography in newsrooms that are reinventing themselves? I Googled the idea and found this article in the American Journalism Review.

What I learned is key for journalists considering venturing into video.

… is how much time it can take to shoot and edit a short piece of video, especially when the poor photographer or reporter also has to bring home still shots or a text story.

The report highlights a study that Andy Dickinson, who teaches online journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in England, did on his blog about the video workflow.

His findings:

• The average video, after editing, is two to three minutes long.
• The average production time is two to four hours.

Dickinson concluded that, typically, it takes one hour to produce one minute of video. But no sooner had he posted that result than the e-mail reactions started rolling in. One photo editor thought the survey should take into account not just editing time but also the time it takes to shoot a video on assignment.

“First of all,” he wrote, “sometimes it takes as much as 2 hours to get to a job, 1-3 hours to shoot, up to two hours driving back to the office, numerous hours of editing, and then we have a 2 minute video, after about 8-10 hours of work. That comes out to 4-5 hours per 1 minute of video in our shop.” The editor said he feared that Dickinson’s survey might lead publishers to think a photographer could produce eight one-minute videos or four two-minute videos in a day. “Anybody think that is really possible?” he asked.

If you’re doing video in your newsroom, post a comment about work flows that work well for you.