NCR's comments provider Civil Comments is shutting down 1 Dec. So NCR will have no comments, though they hope to open them up again when they can find another provider. I wonder what the trolls do when comments shut down. I guess they migrate to another venue to exercise their charms. Otherwise, all that venom and sewage would back up and you'd have troll explosions all over the place. Ugh!
While I'm here, I'll join with others in welcoming back Jim Pauwels. Nice to have you here, Jim.
Stanley, thank you. It's nice to see you and so many old friends still here.
ReplyDeleteI am also glad to see Jim back here!
ReplyDeleteIn a way I am sorry to see comments ending on NCR, but I can't say that I blame them. As with so many comment forums, things seemed to go down the rabbit hole in nothing flat. Less than 10 comments in, the comments were no longer about the article. It was just the same people riding their same hobby horses, and usually doing it as offensively as possible. I haven't commented on there in several years.
Just got my Commonweal Associates newsletter (though not sure why I still get this).
ReplyDeleteLooks like circ and donations spiked after they shut off blog commments. Circ jumped from 70k to 90k readers in the last year. Donations doubled from 2015 to 2017 (from about $500k to $1 million). And everybody got badly needed new office chairs!
I am reminded of that Aussie toast to "those who left their country for the good of their country."
Certainly a lesson in humility to those of us who thought we were "value added" to the enterprise.
Wow - now I'm writhing with guilt for holding them back all those years :-)
DeletePost Hoc, Propter Hoc Reminder.
DeleteI suspect the circulation and donations have a lot more to do with an anti-trump effect than blog comments. Would that we had that big of a negative or positive effect...
I am very happy with this blog over being a commenter on the old blog. I think that many commenters there have become good posters. I was very surprised that everyone pulled this off so quickly and that a very high rate of posting has been maintained. I am glad we are now beginning to pick up more of the survivors from the blog closing.
True, Jack, that correlation is not cause.
DeleteSome of the uptick in revenue came from bequests, and these had probably been in the wills of the donors for some time.
But the editors and board--some of the folks who had grown weary of the blog serve on the board--may have been on to something when they showed us the door and switched out the lights.
The magazine seems very proud of its monthly e-letter to young readers and a big growth in Commonweal Local Communities (up from five in 2016 to 35). My guess is that staff, now freed from babysitting the blog, has more time to push these enterprises.
Jean,
DeleteAny indication of whether giving two subscriptions for the price of one has had any effect. When members of our Cleveland Local Community complain of the commute time, I tell them to give gift subscriptions and start a meeting in their area.
There is a great potential for CLCs if people are willing to recruit. The optimal size for a small CLC is between 8 and 16 people. If you start the group at 8 people and over the course of 8 months recruit one new person a month, i.e. one friend for each member, you have very manageable growth, and you double the membership each year.
I signed up for a CLC. I was invited to a meeting in Boca Raton, where every time I go a huge black SUV falls in behind me, and I can see in my rear view mirror that the driver is looking at something below dash board level that appears to be more interesting to her than not rear-ending me is. I was willing to risk it, except I had a conflict. I sent regrets and said I was still interested but have heard no more.
DeleteProbably a Vatican sting operation to ferret out liberal Catholics in your area, Tom. Send fake invites and see who responds. Sister Mary Espionage was inputting your data in a dash can monitor. Did she look like an albino? Please check in once a week so we know you haven't been hooded and taken to a remote location for questioning. Sad how many of my nonaffiliated friends who have read too much Dan Brown would take this comment seriously.
DeleteThere are no CLCs within an hour of my area, just cornfields and Methodist Christmas bazaars (which I have a weakness for), and my guess is that they wouldn't let me in, seeing as how they're billed as "civilized, intelligent, and sometimes long-winded."
Jean and Tom,
DeleteStart your own CLC!
People do not need to be subscribers.
CLCs started as a grassroots movement that asked for Commonweal help in locating other subscribers.
However in Cleveland and elsewhere these are spread across the metropolitan area. We would probably need about five CLC locations to have CLCs which were within reasonable driving distance. Then there is the date and time problem.
My advice to our members is to recruit locally and start another meeting time and location
You can do it in your home, along with parishes homes are one of the most frequent locations.
You might also try the local public library. A Commonweal subscriber who organizes Democrats says that meeting rooms are easy to get at libraries.
The Cleveland CLC did King and his Mentors for October
A Consistent Ethic of Solidarity for November
and for December we are doing .
Can the Churches be Reunited: the Orthodox might have the answer
If you use Cleveland's selections you can consider yourself as Cleveland West and Cleveland South!
Um, no. I'm sick and don't have energy to waste. I tried helping set up a Scripture study that the priest said fizzled because we had no charisma. We have a nun in our sister parish, and all groups have to be cleared through her now.
DeleteJack wrote, "Post Hoc, Propter Hoc Reminder. I suspect the circulation and donations have a lot more to do with an anti-trump effect than blog comments."
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, When I read Jean's comment a bit earlier, I was trying to arrange those three sets of facts - the end of our dotCom life, the election of Trump and the increase in Commonweal's subscriber base and donation intake - into the right cause-and-effect relationship. What I came up with was, "Commonweal kicked us off the blog, and therefore Donald Trump was elected president." Other theories, like Jack's that Trump's election would result in a spike of interest in the content of a progressive magazine, may also be entertained ...
Jim, you and Jack or on target I suspect. The dotCom blog/comments closed less than a year ago - a few months into 2017 - but donations doubled between 2015 - 2017. Months are not given, but if they had doubled by January 2017, then the dotCom blog had nothing to do with it. Similarly, the rise in circulation probably has nothing to do with it. The political situation in our country (and in the RCC) most likely does have something to do with it - maybe a lot to do with it.
DeleteTrump, the complicity of the bishops in his election, and the continued attacks on Francis from the right-wing of the church may be driving the "progressives" to find an alternative to Zed, National Catholic Register, and EWTN. The web is overwhelmed with right-wing Catholic blogs and other media. NCRonline, Commonweal, and America are pretty much it for the middle and progressive side. America's circulation has also gone up significantly, and they still have comments.
I find the articles at Commonweal to be much less interesting - they were excellent discussion starters, but seem incomplete without comments.
I am not sure why people insist that the blog closure had nothing to do with the circ spike. Seems a simple enough equation:
DeleteLimited staff/budget - time spent on a blog that was not drawing more readers and may have been alienating people = more time to improve circ.
We have no idea what kind of blowback the editors were getting from readers who felt the blog was pulling the publication away from its Catholic roots by offering a forum for those with axes to grind with the Church (yes, this means me!). Heard this anecdotally from a few acquaintances in Lansing, but whether that was a big factor, don't know.
Just because I find the changing world of journalism fascinating generally, I think it would be interesting to know if the circ stats I saw include the hip new email mag for young people called "the weal." Uptick was among digital readers vs. paper readers, who have declined), and would be useful to know how digital circulation is defined: actual paid subscriptions or hits.
The associates newsletter is a PR piece, so it's going to make things look hunky dory, so am skeptical that I have all the info needed to make more than some guarded analysis here.
Crediting the election of Trump for the spike strikes me as weird. Certainly this event was a victory for the Forces of Darkness, but I'm not following the logic that makes it a boon for Commonweal circ.
Anyway. The blog left the station a year ago. Don't mean to derail Stanley's original post other than to show interest in how struggling publications build readership and "community" and still turn a profit.
When proposing the Trump explanation I was thinking of the larger trend toward polarization in the media. If the Commonweal subscribers who are members of our CLC are typical there is a strong desire to get away from the battling pundits world and into one where thoughtful analysis plays a larger role.
DeleteWhen the local parish put our meeting date and time in its bulletin there was a strong concern that people with an "agenda" might come and dominate the meeting. So I have avoided announcing topics and have required preregistration so people can't just drop in.
Jean, there may be something to your point that the demise of dotCom frees up the editors to focus on other projects that boost circulation and donations. But it also seems that other thoughtful, progressive magazines and newspapers have seen a "Trump Bump".
Deletehttps://www.thestreet.com/story/14024114/1/trump-bump-grows-into-subscription-surge.html
Jim, I have never been a subscriber to the NYTimes, nor to Atlantic. Since I live in DC, I have subscribed to the Washington Post for decades. This year, I bought a digital subscription to the NYTimes, and plan on one to Atlantic - simply as small gesture of support. My small contribution to legitimate journalism. I am happy to see that many others have done the same. Thanks for the link.
DeleteAnne, hurrah! Good journalism is always worth supporting. The Internet seems to have broken the basic pay-for-content model that sustained newspapers and magazines for a couple of centuries. But we need independent and professional journalists in order to maintain even the tatters and shards of a well-functioning democracy.
DeleteSo okay, today is Dec. 1st. I expected when I went over to check out NCR that comments would be gone. But they are still there. Did we get the target date wrong?
ReplyDeleteRemember Commonweal eliminated comments as part of a complete redesign. Maybe on NCR it will take some time to shut them off since it is not part of a complete redesign.
DeleteKatherine, reading it again, NCR said AFTER Dec 1.
DeleteDecember 2 and NCR comments are still up. Maybe something changed with Civil Comments to give them a reprieve. Looking at the comments, they all didn't seem so civil.
DeleteYeah, it seems like some people don't have enough to occupy their time, and don't have any original thoughts, either.
DeleteAlthough comments at NCR are still clickable, they now come up with "comments are now closed".
ReplyDeleteRe discussion groups. I am happy for those for whom they work. I have suffered a severe hearing loss during the last 5 years, and I have so much difficulty understanding what people say in groups I no longer participate. The problem is less with loudness than with "clarity". (" Sounds may seem muffled, and people may seem to mumble"). It largely depends on the acoustics of the rooms where people meet, and in the individual voices. Some are very clear, others speak very softly, or look down when speaking etc, - mannerisms that reduce clarity for the hearing impaired.
ReplyDeleteSo, online discussions are important to me, even when I do not directly participate. This is why I am sorry to see the end of comments at Commonweal, and now at NCR. Unfortunately, comments sections have degenerated to the point that I never look at them on mainstream sites, like the WashPost. But the religious sites seem to be little better. Commonweal was one of the best for civil discussion. Perhaps too "intellectual" for the average troll?
Anne, apparently hearing loss manifests in my family in the late 80's. You describe well the problems of listening to speech, especially in groups. I don't think hearing aids work well in this area since normal hearing is never completely recovered. I have come to believe that the solution is computer voice recognition married to a display worn like glasses. In other words, life with subtitles. I think they can do it now. Since I always preferred foreign movies with subtitles instead of dubbing, I think it'll work for me if the need arises.
DeleteI hear volume just fine, but I don't always hear clearly. Especially where there is a lot of background noise. The doc said that hearing aids won't help this. I have learned to lip read. And develop a sense of humor. "The cat gotta orange?" No, "The car needs an oil change." Then there's this, with apologies to the late great Joe Cocker: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3xJWxPE8G2c
DeleteMy loss is typically "age related", but it started early. I got my first hearing aids at 61, naively believing that they would give me 'normal" hearing (for $5000 out of pocket) just as my ($250/pair) contact lenses give me normal vision. Nope. At first I only needed them in large work meetings (women's higher frequency voices disappeared), but about 4 years ago, there was a rapid decline that wiped out all hearing in the highest frequencies. The aids can't amplify sounds that are not heard at all, so I don't hear all of the letters in many words, distorting the sounds so that the words often make no sense.
ReplyDeleteSince my older sibs also needed hearing aids in their 60s, the doc says it's "genetic". I do hope by the time my kids are in their 50s and 60s (they listened to a lot more loud music than I did), there is a solution. I never realized the extreme diminishment in quality of life until about 3 or 4 years ago when the loss was greater than the hearing aids could deal with, no matter how expensive. I would love some of your glasses with subtitles! I have read something about that, but the real solution lies in the research being done to restore hearing by
transplanting healthy cochlea in the inner ear. I know that Crystal has severe vision problems, another major quality of life issue. I'm guessing you can't drive, right Crystal, so going to a CLC group would be problematic.
Anne, I am so sorry to hear about your hearing impairment. I'll add you to my prayer list.
DeleteI recall that Ann Olivier was vision-impaired. How she managed to read and post comments to dotCom at all, much less with such erudition, good sense and kindness, I am not sure.
The other night I noticed in a cab a sign announcing the cab had a hearing coil..wow! If it's like those in movie theaters, a hearing aid is supposed to pick up the "broadcast" from the coil. I'm dithering over hearing aids and for the moment cupping my hands over my ears to direct the sound.
DeleteAnyway, anybody think these coils work?