Infuriating. Ludicrous. Obscene. Profane. Even racist.
These are all terms which could be used to describe the readers’ comments section on the Tampa Bay Times website.
You could also say it was never dull. If one sifted through all of the rants and raves, there was genuine insight to be gleaned from some readers’ comments.
Unfortunately, the paywall the Times recently built to charge readers for visiting its site may be suffocating this once-vibrant feature of TampaBay.com.
A cursory glance of the Times‘ site shows the number of comments are down — it’s just not clear by how much.
For the last five full stories (not blog post or round-ups) written by City Hall reporter Mark Puente BEFORE the paywall was established there was an average of 67 reader comments per story, with one story generating 107 comments.
Contrast those numbers to the post-paywall results: for the five stories bylined by Puente AFTER the paywall was established, there was an average of 13 reader comments per story, with the last four stories averaging just 8 comments per story.
That’s quite a drop-off. But is such a drop-off the norm?
The impact of the paywall is not as clear for columns written by John Romano. Two of the last five columns he penned before the paywall received 104 and 209 reader comments, respectively, while two columns written after the paywall received 62 and 94 reader comments, respectively.
The number of comments on Gary Shelton’s stories are down, but the number he received before and after the paywall were all over the place. One day Shelton received five comments, the next column he generated 151.
Dan Ruth’s columns didn’t generate a lot of reader comments before or after the paywall.
Still, to this avid Times reader, the volume of comments seems down. Many of the familiar readers’ avatars I often saw online are no longer showing up. The “most commented” story today on TampaBay.com has generated just 37 comments; I don’t have any data to back me up but it seemed to be that the “most commented” stories often received at least one hundred or more comments.
Anyone from the Times care to comment?
