As many here know, Florida Today allows comments to their articles. If you go to an old school type forum and register with a valid email address. And while you can choose to be anonymous on Florida Today’s popular Watchdog blog (which uses Google’s Blogger platform to administer comments), you have to choose a handle and use Florida Today’s discussion board software, the open-source phpBB (and the insecure version 2, at that).

Worse, your time is probably wasted on commenting on regular articles, since they are pulled from the website after several weeks. While the comments seem to stay in the forum, they are hardly much use after the story is gone.

Many newspapers around the country, including the New York Times, are waking up to the fact that hiding (or deleting) old content only serves to hurt themselves. While admittedly many of the stories on a newspaper are tied heavily to the moment, the benefit of keeping content forever is what makes a website, over time, become more useful to more people. Florida Today is slowly catching on, but we’ll see if they ever really make the leap to true social internet news reporting.

Now, Critical Miami is reporting on the Miami Herald’s decision to abandon ordinary blog commenting. They want to go to a moderated system, or even full-registration like Florida Today. Apparently, no one at either of these papers understands how to moderate comments normally. I’ve been a registered user at the Herald’s site for many years. They’ve changed their registration system three times, none for the better. If you view too many articles at their website, you’ll have to register to view more (or erase your cookies, change your IP address, or wait a few days). I have no problem with it, but it serves no real purpose for the website. What the Miami Herald doesn’t seem to get, along with so many other newspapers, is that you can’t control your content if you want to be successful on the internet.

The media’s failure to fully grasp the way the internet works (in this click-happy society) has only served to given rise to hyperlocal blogs like CriticalMiami, Tampa’s Sticks of Fire, and even our little Brevard Outlook. You’d think as editor of Brevard Outlook, I’d be happy about Big Media’s mishaps. I’m not. True community is working together and fostering open discussion with as few barriers as possible. I’d love to see Florida Today implement trackbacks, open comments, and a more search-engine friendly site. It benefits all Brevardians if they do so. And it will also benefit Florida Today. But considering how long it took for the few positive changes they have made, I’m not hopeful of much improvement before the decade is out.