Newsrooms are taking comments seriously again

In the 2010s, news publishers couldn’t shut their comment sections fast enough. The space “below the line” had become a noisy, thankless place to spend your time, where bile and bad-faith arguments too often drowned out any genuine discussion or personal connection, or skewed the way readers thought about the journalism above.

Publishers saw comment sections as a reputational hazard and a cost center and, by the middle of the decade, a dozen sites — including Popular Science, Chicago Sun-Times, Motherboard, Reuters, and NPR — had significantly reduced or completely disabled commenting features. Each argued, often without the data to back it up, that its readers preferred to discuss stories via social media. And so what was once heralded as a new frontier of reader dialog died a not-so-quiet death.

A decade on, something surprising is happening: Reader comments are having a mini renaissance. After years of chasing social media engagement and being burned in the process, publishers have realized that commenting has a tangible value — to the broader public, yes, but also in terms of advertising and subscription revenue.

The Washington Post relaunched its subscribers-only commenting platform in late 2024, promising “meaningful and high-quality discourse” as part of an effort to create “a space where diverse perspectives can connect, engage, and thrive.” After an initial outpouring of reader pushback, the commenting tools now seem to be fully integrated into the site.

The Financial Times now uses automated moderation tools to help readers have smarter discussions under articles and encourage comments from people who don’t typically engage. Meanwhile, Wired touted a new commenting experience — where readers can connect with journalists and writers — as part of its new, improved subscription offering.

It might have taken the disappearance of digital advertising dollars, readers getting used to paywalls, social media becoming a cesspit, and the introduction of new powerful AI tools, but publishers are finally coming to realise that the best community has always been right under their noses.

A civilized “dumpster fire”

In 2010, The Times of London put up a paywall that many said would fail. As it did so, it also doubled down on reader comments, which changed some of the motivations for journalists participating in online discussions, and eventually, commenters too. As the editor responsible for reader comments, I saw firsthand what that looked like. Only paying subscribers could post and there was active moderation. How the audience reacted to a story was part of the journalistic process.

My small team of community moderators, most of whom had just started in journalism and were curious about how audiences behaved, attempted to ensure conversations stayed on track. We monitored comments on hot-button topics like Brexit, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and one of the toughest discussions to oversee — one man biting another on the football pitch. They trawled through thousands of comments every day to highlight the most insightful ones and flagged to journalists comments with a valid question or that deserved a reply.

The operation was lean, with just six moderators covering 24 hours, seven days a week. I felt that we had both a responsibility to The Times’ brand as one of the oldest and most authoritative news publishers in the U.K., as well a broader societal responsibility to keep the conversation civil and constructive. But that wasn’t always easy.

For starters, the software we used was clunky and made it difficult to understand the context of a post — increasing the chance of moderation errors. It was hard to showcase the best responses under an article. RIP Livefyre, you won’t be missed.

Then there was the challenge of creating and operationalizing policies. Every day involved judgment calls: Should we keep comments open under crime stories, knowing that a single careless remark could risk contempt of court? (As opposed to in the U.S., the U.K. bans certain kinds of pretrial crime coverage and reader discussion that might prejudice the jury.)

How could we guide conversations about immigration so they remained constructive rather than toxic? There were many gray areas. For example, users would use a derogatory term that we considered hateful, only to point out that a columnist had used it in a satirical piece. It took extreme patience to explain the difference but, frankly, sometimes I sided with the readers.

Naturally, our audience would dispute decisions that they didn’t like, with a handful sending us quotes of our policies to back up their rationale. We got to know the most avid commenters, particularly on the Sport section, where rivalries run deep and punches are not spared.

One infamously combative Times commenter posted under his real name because he felt that “people tend to be more accountable when they’re not posting anonymously.” By 2022, long after my time there, The Times had changed their policy and they now require subscribers to post under their real names. However, research has shown that this isn’t necessarily effective, and, ironically, that commenter who insisted on it was banned for flouting the rules one too many times.

But there were moments of magic too: Personal contributions on stories about men’s mental health and suicide received touching, heartfelt responses from other readers. People would get to know other commenters, building weak ties and sometimes friendships.

Some columnists used reader comments as the starting point for an article. One even called it “the most civilized dumpster fire on the internet.” On one occasion, we even selected the best politics commentators to visit The Times’ offices for a conversation with our political editor. It was like watching kids at Christmas.

But Christmas only happens once a year. Here’s what I’d do to ensure that goodwill lasts longer for both publishers and commenters, throughout the whole year.

What worked — and what didn’t

Build the business case for commenting around reader engagement, but also customer satisfaction and subscriber renewal rates. If you can show that a healthy conversation keeps paying subscribers’ attention for longer — even if they’re reading and not actively participating — the investment becomes easier to justify.

Most journalists whose articles face criticism below the line may be surprised by the following statement: People who post a comment are more likely to return to the site and be loyal to the brand, even if the comment isn’t glowing praise.

We saw it in the data at The Times: Regular commenters regularly read more articles, renewed their subscription, and were more flexible when we made product changes. The FT has also found that comment writers are up to 48 times more engaged than readers who don’t comment.

Yet at The Times, we never cracked the business case for commenting. Even as evidence mounted that nudging people to leave comments was good for business, it was hard to argue for more investment because the returns weren’t plainly obvious to decision-makers. That meant conversations asking for additional staff or replacing the clunky, unfunded commenting tech never went anywhere. I think that selling the business benefits of creating a community is as important as the community building itself.

Don’t pay lip service to “creating a community.” Treat replies from journalists, editors, and informed readers as a core feature of the experience. Work with product, tech, and marketing teams to bake it in: make leaving your first comment part of the onboarding, build it into your marketing copy, and ensure commenting objectives are visible on all internal dashboards.

Beyond the numbers, it was clear that the quality of the conversation was a differentiator for The Times. Our comment sections were worlds apart from the cesspits of other publisher competitors at the time, with our editor dubbing it a “community where like-minded people can communicate.” He also said that “most Times readers know far more than the journalists” so often that it became a running joke in the newsroom.

But we never quite made commenting a unique selling point of our product. The subscription pitch focused on access to journalism, not participation in it. “Join the debate” never made it onto the annual brand campaign, even though our audience research found that it was what made many readers keep coming back. In hindsight, this was a missed opportunity.

Moderation of fast-moving news stories requires a strong editorial eye, and that skill should be recognized and rewarded. As AI starts to enable better detection of policy violations, newsrooms should use that breathing space to invest in moderator wellbeing and career progression. Automation can reduce the noise, but it won’t entirely replace human judgment or newsroom instinct for some time yet.

The people running it were what made it all work. Our moderators were much closer to the role New_ Public often calls stewards. They also ran our social media output, acting less like ban-wielding enforcers and more like hosts at a lively dinner party. They’d welcome guests, steer conversations, and yes, occasionally have to kick someone out. They were the newsroom’s eyes and ears among our readership, but too often they were stretched too thin, covering all hours with limited backup and little recognition. Many quit because they didn’t feel like there was a clear onward career path.

High turnover was inevitable, and in retrospect, we might have enlisted our more constructive commenters — who cared about our journalism as much as we did — as volunteer hosts on specific sections. They understood the culture and policies as well as anyone and had a personal stake in keeping it civil. We just never built the framework to let them help.

Looking back, it’s tempting to write readers’ comments off as a quaint relic of the early internet. But I believe in the comments, and I think they have a future. As of now, subscribers can still comment on Times articles. Within the shifting environment that digital publishers have found themselves in, it’s vital to reckon with the needs of news-consuming audiences beyond timely information. People are eager to connect and have real dialogue about topics that inform their lives. Comment sections need to change, but I think they can serve a vital role.

The challenge for newsrooms isn’t technological; rather, it’s a cultural shift that’s necessary, a move to appreciate contributions “below the line” and the value — monetary and otherwise — that they bring.

The comments are open again. Let’s not mess it up this time.