Nasty Comments Shut Down WAPO Blog

It's always entertaining when the mainstream media (MSM) gets puckered by the real world. In this case, it's the Washington Post.

From Editor and Publisher:

Jim Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post's Web site, who took down a popular reader blog Thursday after it overflowed with harsh messages about Ombudsman Deborah Howell, said the blog would likely return in the future. But, he said the Web site would have to find some better screening technology to filter out obscenities.

"We got about 1,000 posts and at least 150 to 200 were using either profanity, hate speech or personal attacks," Brady said about the responses to Howell's controversial column last Sunday, in which she stated that indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both political parties, when most research shows he only gave directly to Republicans.

Brady said the comments forced his staff to spend hours time reviewing the responses and tossing out those that were unusable for the blog. "We don't allow profanity or name-calling and we need to figure out a way to keep it clean," he told E&P late Thursday. "It was a real burden."

Brady is trying to figure out how to solve the problem. In the meantime, he feels like he's being picked on.

[I] t is a little frustrating to be accused of not taking criticism when I think we did a good job of that," he said.

Sniff ...

Companion post at Diggers Realm.