Friday, May 1, 2009

Gannett Blog under attack

Over at Gannett Blog, Jim Hopkins is under attack by a few thugs trying to damage his blog. They are swarming his comments section with attacks -- they're attacking his performance at the Gannett shareholder's meeting, attacking his style, plus, hurling vile personal attacks. And when he deletes the revolting comments they post more comments complaining that he is censoring negative comments about himself (uh, that complaint sounds familiar.)

A little background here. One reliable reader told Jim a consultant is advising the company on how to interfere with Gannett Blog.
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25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Vile personal attacks? Sounds like you could be writing them.

John Altevogt said...

As if by magic your first response is a troll. I'm not surprised. I personally would like to see registration and at least the assignment of a screen name before posting was allowed.

I think we've got one or two of these clowns on here and if you watch the writing styles, they're commenting on their own posts. They used to allow anonymous posts under The Star's articles and there would be pages and pages of comments all reading the same. As soon as they required a screen name and registration the comments went down dramatically.

McClatchy Watch said...

John -- yes, just a handful of trolls leave the attack comments here.

By accident or design, some of them follow tactics from this book.

Anonymous said...

Registration... tough call. Some of us still work at MNI and would hate to have their IT guys hack in and get ID's. If that is possible. Just ime out or ban the offending URL's....

John Altevogt said...

You're giving these people far too much credit. If they'd been reading anything they'd also be more articulate, be able to construct and argument, etc. They can't.

Incidentally, I've read that book and also chatted with Alinsky personally just a few months before he died.

He was not a fan of the new left.

Anonymous said...

He was not a fan of the new left.

----------
They never are. That is why they call them useful idiots and proceed to snuff them out once their usefulness is all used up.

If you've never seen Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press, you are missing something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_xdBnFPqOI&feature=related

The guy is a former KGB agent and spells everything out in very clear terms.

Anonymous said...

FWIW, the answer to the trolls is more free speech, imo. They'll get tired and go away after a while. They're easy to pick out and the other posters usually pay no attention to them.

Walter Abbott

Anonymous said...

****FWIW, the answer to the trolls is more free speech, imo. They'll get tired and go away after a while.****

I look forward to that. Then we far-right-wingnuts can talk to ourselves without the bother of hearing anyone express a different opinion once in a while.

Anonymous said...

Vile personal attacks are a specialty of the moonbat left. No other part of the spectrum has anything close to the vicious, foul, nasty personal venom that spews from the lefites. They don't even pretend to be part of the conversation because their goal is to suppress the conversation, not dialog.
Kind of like talking with an editor at a major newspapaer.

John Altevogt said...

Exactly. Liberalism is at its foundation a totalitarian ideology. Alan Wolfe's Seamy Side of Democracy on the left and Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism on the right have both described this phenomenon.

In the case of our trolls, there's also a great deal of childishness, as evidenced by the first few comments this morning. As I said, our baby is looking for attention this morning. Everyone wave so he/she/it will feel loved.

Dave D. said...

...As 9:00pm indicates, the trolls are gutless and hide in the shadows of false persona. Make 'em identify and they go somewhere else.

..Make 'em identify. This blog will never get beyond namecalling until these troll posters are made personally responsible for what they write. Whatever accomplishes that, I'm for it. If the employee's of McClatchy can't find the balls to state and stand behind their opinion, they should slink off.

Anonymous said...

***Vile personal attacks are a specialty of the moonbat left. No other part of the spectrum has anything close to the vicious, foul, nasty personal venom that spews from the lefites.***

7:44, have you ever heard Michael Savage? Ever heard of Ann Coulter? Ever read Michelle Malkin?

John Altevogt said...

Wow! Ann Coulter posts here? I did not know that.

"7:44, have you ever heard Michael Savage? Ever heard of Ann Coulter? Ever read Michelle Malkin?"

You can't ask someone to risk their job just so they can comment on a blog and the real comments we get from inside these papers are worth the extra effort, but the demand for a specific screen name will quickly identify the troll(s?) and limit their childishness.

Anonymous said...

Given the conservative/racist/intolerant leanings of you and most of your audience, I wouldn't be surprised if you folks were leaving the comments on Jim's blog. And, while we're on the topic of Jim's blog, why is his sooooo much better than yours? Do you believe it is because he was 10 times the journalist your were? I mean, he left on his own accord. He wasn't kicked to the curb like you.

John Altevogt said...

9:45 I think this is what we have in mind when we speak of personal attacks. What argument are you addressing? What is your argument, a sort of "the conservatives burned the Reichstag"?

Anonymous said...

***Vile personal attacks are a specialty of the moonbat left. No other part of the spectrum has anything close to the vicious, foul, nasty personal venom that spews from the lefites.***

Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin are part of the "moonbat left"? Wow! I did not know that.

Anonymous said...

Vile personal attacks are a specialty of the moonbat left.Naturally. How else did Obamababoon got elected?

Anonymous said...

Obooma and Soros had a plan to interrupt blogs, and paid trolls to do their dirty business for them. The plan was to get to the thread first, and write as many useless drivel posts as they could, to make the blog look lame. Then to post long, boring articles to off put casual visitors. Then, to definitely break copyright rules, and run to alert the original newspaper that a blog was posting their full articles, called pinch & snitch. The weasels we see here are just weasels, they voted for a Teleprompter, and now his radical environmental supporters are demanding the end of using sacred trees for newsprint. The whackjobs will look upon the end of newspapers as a complete victory for saving the planet. Oh, the irony of it all!

Anonymous said...

-Ban personal attacks-
The thing I don’t like to see happening here, is that if someone does use a name, they are personally attacked for having an opinion. It seems to me if personal attacks were simply not allowed, the ugliness inbred in some of these juvenile posters would be neutered. Rebut the opinion, but one word about the person, and the post is deleted. I especially don’t like the cheap shots aimed at our host. What purpose do the attacks serve? None. They just start off a round of clutter, when there are topics of information, and congenial discussions to be had instead.
My 2Ȼ

John Altevogt said...

Good points. Unfortunately,many of the troll posts don't even have an opinion to comment on. They're just clutter.

Diversity of opinions rationally expressed should always be welcome, but these childish comments are a waste of everyone's time.

Anonymous said...

Ann Coulter has the last laugh on everyone.
I never quite understand Ann Coulter being cited as someone hateful. Her books become best sellers, and that takes a wide range of buyers. She is considered a conservative writer, but she will take off on Republicans just as readily as Democrats. Many newspapers offered Coulter and Molly Ivins as opposing political views, and Ivins was just as ‘hateful’ if that what you call it? I think liberals are trying to silence a critical voice making too much sense. Michael Moore is just as ‘hateful,’ but the lefties don’t seem to mind his shtick. Coulter has a humorous tongue-in-cheek style, and I am sure she laughs all the way to the bank.

Anonymous said...

***Diversity of opinions rationally expressed should always be welcome***

Except by you, who always has a name (usually "corrupt") to call anyone you disagree with.

Anonymous said...

Corrupt is an adjective, not a name. It accurately describes the KC Star, it's employees and anyone representing the entity or any part of it.

Anonymous said...

Is Kansas City in Kansas or Missouri or Oklahoma or Nebraska? I flew over it once and it bored me.

Anonymous said...

the extreme, vile and personal nature of the moonbat left utterly transcends Coulter or Malkin's best efforts. The underlying political philosophy of the left is dominance and intolerance. It's no accident that speech codes come into force when the lefties are most in power.

Moreover they seem to know no bounds in using sexual, personal or other irrelevant images to attempt dominance or stifling of dissent. They are indeed a nasty bunch.

As for the paid hacks who demand that employees of the MNI self identify to be credible. Wouldn't that be convenient for your masters? That way they could fire the ones who are still employed and persecute the rest.

I understand why management of the MNI would want to use paid trolls to work the blogs. What I don't understand is why anyone with integrity would do it.