Do you wonder why the newspaper did what it did, or didn't do what it didn't do? The editor's blog is where Daily News Executive Editor Patrick Dougherty answers your questions, responds to your complaints and generally explains the behavior of the Daily News. It's also where we post news about the paper and our company. Do you think we missed or mishandled important news, misused a photo or put the wrong headline on a story? Did you like something you found in the paper? Do you have problems with the website? Send questions to me at editorsblog@adn.com or post your comments online. I only ask that you be clear, concise and civil, to me and to your fellow commenters.
Contact: editorsblog@adn.com
Why shut off comments on Palin? - 11/6/2009 9:45 am
Using comment features - 8/19/2009 5:49 pm
McClatchy surprises Wall Street - 7/22/2009 9:21 am
Question on comments - 4/21/2009 9:35 am
Why so tough on comments? - 4/16/2009 2:30 pm
Note to our commenters - 4/10/2009 2:31 pm
Behind the Newspaper Negativists - 3/20/2009 9:25 am
The talk you won't hear from Dan Fagan on KFQD - 2/6/2009 10:00 am
Fourth quarter grim news for ADN parent, other media companies - 2/5/2009 1:58 pm
adn.com one of Top 30 newspaper websites in December - 1/22/2009 5:20 pm
Update on policing ADN blog comments - 1/21/2009 4:27 pm
For journalists, welcome news from the president - 1/21/2009 1:37 pm
Q&A about the changes in the business of the ADN - 1/20/2009 9:54 am
Q&A with Tony Hopfinger about online publishing - 1/20/2009 9:46 am
175 million page views and other adn.com stats - 1/16/2009 4:30 pm
On reader comments - 1/15/2009 3:16 pm
This comment is worth repeating . . . - 1/14/2009 11:58 pm
More from the Palin-Dougherty chronicles - 1/13/2009 5:03 pm
Here's an actual history of the "Trig Palin conspiracy" - 1/13/2009 12:43 pm
Trig story question from the Anchorage Press - 1/12/2009 10:48 pm
Full text of the Palin-ADN email exchange - 1/12/2009 12:50 pm
Gov. Palin's press office: 'There they go again?' - 1/8/2009 7:03 pm
NOVEMBER 6, 2009 - 9:45 AM
What happened to the comments section under the story about Sarah Palin's book tour?
I made the decision to turn off comments on this story. We offer comments on stories in the hope of some reasonable discussion of the topic being covered, or the handling of the story by the newspaper. Unfortunately, comments on stories about our former governor invariably seem to devolve into little more than food fights between people who like her and those who don't.
In addition, these stories, for whatever reason, particularly seem to attract individuals who are unable or unwilling to adhere to our commenting guidelines, and that consumes my time or that of other staff here that could be better used for other work.
AUGUST 19, 2009 - 5:49 PM
I have posted on the ADN.COM Comments section several times. Can you tell me or direct me to correct department to find out what Recommend or Report Abuse means at the end of every posting?
I understand the report abuse but not sure what or who recommends?
M.C.
M.C.:
Comments can be displayed several ways, depending on which way you prefer. The default is "newest first," but you could choose to display "most recommended." If you, as a reader, think a comment is especially good, you can hit the recommend button. That will move up that comment when other readers look at most recommended comments. Look for the drop-down menu "Showing" just above the first comment to select the display you prefer.
JULY 22, 2009 - 9:21 AM
From the Sacramento Bee
Wednesday, Jul. 22, 2009
The McClatchy Co. has cut its way back to profitability in a big way but still faces problems with debt and an industrywide downturn in newspaper advertising.
After losing money in the first quarter, The Bee's parent said Tuesday that it earned $42.2 million in the second quarter, about double the $19.7 million reported a year earlier. Per-share earnings rose to 50 cents from 24 cents.
Gary Pruitt, McClatchy's chairman and chief executive, said he was "extremely pleased" with the results, which showed that McClatchy is "taking the right steps."
APRIL 21, 2009 - 9:35 AM
Why do the various comment sections often have fewer comments than the number listed at the beginning?
I believe that's because the comment "counter" counts comments from users who have been blocked as well as those who haven't. So commenters who continue to post even after they've been blocked still get their comments counted. Also, comments that have been manually deleted by an ADN administrator may also continue to show up in the count.
Is it really that people are hitting the "abuse" button to eliminate comments that aren't flattering to Sarah Palin or is it a site malfunction?
APRIL 16, 2009 - 2:30 PM
A number of you have asked questions about the comment system and our management of it. Here is some general information. I will add to it as I have time. If you have specific questions about comments, post them here or email them to me directly at editorsblog@adn.com. Do not post them on news stories or other blog posts (that would be off-topic.).
To state the obvious first, Pluck is not a perfect commenting system. We liked our old system, which we built here at the Daily News. We were required to switch over to Pluck when that became the standard throughout the McClatchy Co.
As long as we have had comments – and it has been years now -- they have been a mixed blessing and I’ve had mixed feelings about them. I discussed my ambivalence about comments in some of the earliest posts on this blog (check the archive).
APRIL 10, 2009 - 2:31 PM
To our readers:
You are welcome to comment here and we appreciate your participation, regardless of your point of view. This is a reminder that the opportunity to comment is a privilege and not a right. We want a civil discussion. To that end, we ask that you:
Make sure your comments are on topic, directly addressing the subject of the story or blog post;
Do not intentionally insult or attack other commenters (disagree but don't be disagreeable);
Avoid spamming (i.e. posting the same message more than once);
Avoid profanity (with or without the funky keyboard symbols) and gratuitously graphic imagery; and
MARCH 20, 2009 - 9:25 AM
This an interesting look at the news coverage of newspapers by the president of Parade Publications, publisher of the Parade magazine Sunday supplement.
Pat Dougherty
By Randy Siegel
As many newspaper companies try to turn themselves around in a brutal economy, under huge debt loads and against a backdrop of increasingly funereal media coverage, it’s worth looking at the behavior and motives of some of the industry’s harshest critics.
Earlier this month, Time magazine, struggling for its own survival in the hemorrhaging newsweekly marketplace, published a column on its website entitled “The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America,” which hundreds of news outlets around the world ran under the headline “What Newspapers Will Die in 2009?” complete with a list of soon-to-be-dead newspapers. The trouble is that Time’s “report” appears to have been created from pure speculation, with minimal reporting or research, by a Time.com affiliate called 24/7 Wall St.
FEBRUARY 6, 2009 - 10:00 AM
Here's an interesting comment about Dan Fagan's musings yesterday about the difficulties in the newspaper business:
Radio, Another "Old Media," Also Struggling: Why No Stories Here?
Submitted by Shooty on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 8:17pm.
(Dan Fagan’s) fixation on the declining newspaper industry is curious, since it's happening in radio too.
Here's an example. The company that pays Dan Fagan to interrupt commercials on KFQD for a few minutes each afternoon is called Morris Communications. On February 1, just four days ago, Morris' publishing arm defaulted on $9.7 million in public bonds, according to the Radio Business Report.
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 - 1:58 PM
By ANICK JESDANUN
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Four media companies reported quarterly losses Thursday, weighed down by the declining value of their properties.
The biggest write-down happened at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., movie studio 20th Century Fox and the Fox broadcast network. After writing down the assets on its books by $8.4 billion, News Corp. said it lost $6.4 billion in its most recent quarter.
Similar factors hurt the results at McClatchy Co. (owner of the Anchorage Daily News), Belo Corp. and Scripps Networks Interactive Inc.
JANUARY 22, 2009 - 5:20 PM
The newspaper trade journal, Editor & Publisher, has a story today listing the Top 30 American newspaper websites, measured by unique visitors, for December. The Daily News came in at No. 24, just behind the Orlando Sentinel and ahead of The Washington Times and Detroit Free Press.
You can find the complete article here.
JANUARY 21, 2009 - 4:27 PM
A follow up to last week's post about comments, from managing editor Julie Wright:
For the most part we've seen a significant reduction in the number of offending comments. You'll see a few comments posted about how we're deleting the comments we disagree with. Some say we're doing it because we don't like Palin. Some say we're doing it because we're "in the tank" for Palin.
A fair read of the comments shows that people on all sides of issues get to have their say if they stay within the rules. The vast majority of e-mails we're getting thank us for tightening up.
We're getting a few e-mails from people asking why their commenting privileges were blocked. The time it's taking to police the comments is significant. We're not inclined to take even more time to look up offending comments to remind posters in what ways they crossed the line.
JANUARY 21, 2009 - 1:37 PM
Access to public information is essential to journalists. For the last eight years, there has been a concerted effort by the Bush administration to limit access to information about the activities of those running the government. Apparently that will change, which is great thing for the public.
Here is a portion of what President Obama had to say today in his first meeting with his cabinet:
"For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city. The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.
JANUARY 20, 2009 - 9:54 AM
Tony Hopfinger co-publishes a local news blog called the Alaska Dispatch. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote and asked if I would participate in a Q&A about the current state of the newspaper industry, the McClatchy Co. and the Daily News.
I told him I would if he would do the same with my questions about independent blogging. He was up for it, so we agreed to swap Q&A’s, with both of us posting the interviews simultaneously on our respective blogs. (You can see his answers to my questions posted below.)
What follows are his questions and my answers.
McClatchy Co.'s stock has traded in recent days below $1 a share. What would happen if the stock price hit $0? Would McClatchy still be in a position to operate? How much should investors and customers of McClatchy worry about the stock price? What is the upshot of the company's performance these days? (I know Howard has mentioned a few thoughts on his blog about this topic.)
JANUARY 20, 2009 - 9:46 AM
These are my questions independent blogger, and free-lance reporter, Tony Hopfinger, about his website, Alaska Dispatch. Amanda Coyne, a local writer, is Tony’s co-publisher and spouse.
Do you consider what you're doing with Alaska Dispatch to be a business or a hobby?
It’s a business to the extent that we hope to raise revenue to contract with editors and freelancers. But neither Amanda nor I view this as a profit-making venture for us personally. We started Alaska Dispatch with our own money because we felt like we might have something to share with the community. We both have full-time jobs, and this is secondary, so it could be classified as a hobby, albeit an obsessive one. But I don’t believe the two need be mutually exclusive.
JANUARY 16, 2009 - 4:30 PM
Here is a short 2008, year-end report for adn.com. It has been an amazing year. We averaged 2 million unique visitors, 14.6 million page views, and 3.4 million “visits” a month.
We especially like the visit measurement because it shows just how engaged our audience is with our content: news, features and advertising. (A visit is when one person is continuously active on the site for at least 30 minutes.)
This year’s peak traffic came in September, with 24.8 million page views and 4.4 million unique visitors. The reasons for the high traffic in September are pretty obvious: the intense national interest in Gov. Sarah Palin and the fact the Daily News was uniquely situated to provide it. To a lesser degree, the same was true of the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens and his ultimately unsuccessful re-election effort.
JANUARY 15, 2009 - 3:16 PM
From Julie Wright, ADN managing editor --
We've had more complaints than usual lately about the hostile, crude and uncivil nature of comments on our stories and blog posts. I've spent more time than usual the past couple of days looking at the comments, and I have to agree that they've taken a turn for the worse. We've allowed a relatively free flow of ideas in hopes of stimulating a vigorous conversation about happenings in our state. The problem is that the comments now threaten to become so toxic that they kill any chance for civil, quality conversation among thoughtful readers.
So, beginning now, we are going to more strictly apply the rules that we've always had in place for comments on stories and blogs. When we see them, we will delete comments that are off topic, crude, attack other posters or are part of an apparent campaign to spam the boards with messages. We will ban users whose comments are particularly egregious, those who show a pattern of unwillingness to follow the rules and spammers. We will continue to allow critical comments about public figures and subjects of stories, but we will not allow crude comments about them or their personal lives. We will also block users who report abuse on others' comments just because they disagree with them.
JANUARY 14, 2009 - 11:58 PM
udub wrote on 01/13/2009 10:40:16 PM:
Pat,
Here is the thing. At this point, the main group of people who would be targeted by the Palin's submitting further proof are the conspiracy theorists, the majority of whom are the ones flooding your newspaper's e-mails and comment sections. However, if you read in detail, as I have, the messages written on the conspiracy web sites, the level of acceptable proof for these people is well beyond birth certificates and doctor statements. The level of distrust in any officical documents, and the certainty of their beliefs, has resulted in many of them stating that NOTHING can be submitted as proof that will persuade them now. NOTHING!!!!!!
JANUARY 13, 2009 - 5:03 PM
Here is another series of emails between Gov. Palin and myself. I hadn’t intended to post these, but Sharon Leighow in the governor’s press office wrote this morning to ask, on behalf of the governor, that I post hers.
What you will see is first an email from me, written yesterday, saying that since almost two weeks had passed and I hadn’t received a reply to my New Year’s Eve email – though the ADN had been the subject of a critical press release from her office – I planned to post the original email.
She replied shortly thereafter, and I responded to her late that afternoon.
JANUARY 13, 2009 - 12:43 PM
Eric Boehlert at the MediaMatters website has written an excellent post -- Palin, the press, and her pregnancy -- recounting the actual history of the Trig Palin conspiracy nonsense. For anyone who is interested in facts about what was reported, when and by whom, this is must reading. For the rest of you, continue to make up your own pseudo-facts.
Find the link here.
One thing I found interesting was the degree to which all responsible, "mainstream media" dealt with this rumor the same way we did.
JANUARY 12, 2009 - 10:48 PM
Pat:
I'm working on a story about Palin's relationship with the media, and when I spoke to her Friday afternoon and asked her about your post on the Editor's Blog addressing her press release (this was before you printed the entire emails) she said that the argument that ADN was doing this to put those rumors to rest definitively, in the best interests of the Palins, was "disingenuous."
McAllister said that "we just need to say they're pursuing an outrageous story, and it ought to shame them for doing it."
In looking at the tally of complaints the governor's office has with the media, this is but one of them with one outlet, the list is quite long, and I'm attempting to be as thorough as I can in contacting the outlets and reporters they've taken issue with to see if you'd like to address the complaint. If so, i'd love to have your response to that in the article. Thanks.
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