NPR Axes Its Comment Section After Deciding It's Not 'Useful'

BY RACHEL KURZIUS ON AUG 17, 2016 1:50 PM

After eight years of trenchant insights from the likes of "Atheist Conservative" and "Grandma_Cool," National Public Radio just announced that it is getting rid of its public comment section on its website.

"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org
stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users," writes Scott Montgomery, NPR's managing editor for digital news. "Only 2,600 people have posted at least one comment in each of the last three months—0.003 percent of the 79.8 million NPR.org users who visited the site during that period."

Additionally, the make-up of the commenters didn't accurately represent readership as a whole. According to Montgomery, commenters were 83 percent male (based on a Google estimate), whereas overall users were 52 percent male.

Instead, Montgomery says, the publicly-funded news org will focus its energies on social media, special engagement events like the Tiny Desk Contest, its audience relations team and ombudsman, as well as experimenting with new forms of engaging with the public.

http://dcist.com/2016/08/npr_is_getting_rid_of_user_comments.php