When I was delivering newspapers as a small child many aeons ago, the best page of The Guardian was 'letters to the editor'. The rest of the paper was pretty good back then, there was no email, so anything printed in the 'letters to the editor' had to be posted in, to appear some time after the events in question.
Needless to say an event happened and was reported the next day, so it could be a whole week between the Trump-of-the-day saying something and comment appearing about it. All of this would be filtered by the 'editor', however you did have frequent letters by the likes of Keith Flett, who somehow got his letters published more often than the other 3-5 million readers (as it was back then, just UK sales with poor distribution in places like Birmingham).
There were no 'likes' back then so you had to have something to say to bother writing in.
How do we get a digital equivalent? I don't buy the dead-tree paper these days so no idea if 'letters to the editor' still exists, but, back then it was good, very good.
Its interesting that simply restricting immediate commenting might at least deter useless comments. People who are commenting in order to elicit a response, i suppose, probably have less important things to say. Or maybe they wouldn't say them if they are not granted the immediate satisfaction.
I assume it would kill some collaboration/innovation like on HN or a meaningful subreddit, but maybe no one really ever has anything meaningful to say when reacting to general news...
I guess it would also produce duplication from many people not knowing something was said already (however, the duplicate reactions could be monetized later down the line maybe...)
Needless to say an event happened and was reported the next day, so it could be a whole week between the Trump-of-the-day saying something and comment appearing about it. All of this would be filtered by the 'editor', however you did have frequent letters by the likes of Keith Flett, who somehow got his letters published more often than the other 3-5 million readers (as it was back then, just UK sales with poor distribution in places like Birmingham).
There were no 'likes' back then so you had to have something to say to bother writing in.
How do we get a digital equivalent? I don't buy the dead-tree paper these days so no idea if 'letters to the editor' still exists, but, back then it was good, very good.