EL Reg Going To Shit?

This topic was created by chuckufarley .

[chuckufarley]

EL Reg Going To Shit?

So I read this article:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/etl_ai_data_scientists/

And I was ready to comment on it. However, comments do not seem to enabled for this article. I don't care who pays El Reg to put a "News Story" on this website. By making it know to your readers that a certain "News Story" is "Sponsored" we will know what to expect but by disabling comments on a "Sponsored" "News Story" El Reg is revoking our ability to give our input to these "Sponsors" and breaking with a system of journalistic feedback that has stood for more than a decade.

Speaking strictly for myself: If I see one more "Sponsored" story that I can not comment on I will not click "Support" on your pop-ups ever again. Unless I am too drunk to click to click my intended option.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: EL Reg Going To Shit?

It's not a new "feature". It's been around for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, for various reasons, comments are disabled on certain articles. At least one particular El Reg author regularly posted articles with comments disabled. Others may have comments disabled because moderation would be too big a chore when there might be legal ramifications to commentards musings. I've not really kept track of the comments being enabled/disabled on sponsored articles. I generally don't read those as they are often little more then extended press releases. Maybe someone, or El Reg themselves might be able to comment on how often, if ever, sponsored articles have comments enabled.

[diodesign]

Comments on sponsored posts

Hi,

We disable comments on sponsored content - or advertorials in other words - for a few reasons.

One is that this move separates the content from our own independent articles. Sponsored content is commissioned by advertisers and produced externally to the El Reg news team; we don't endorse it. We don't want readers to think it's part of our normal output, and one way to make that clear is to switch off comments.

You say we're "breaking with a system of journalistic feedback," which proves my point: the pieces aren't journalism. It's paid-for content, produced outside the news team, and funds our actual journalism, which is independently produced.

C.