Making Use of Online Comments

Online comments to news stories are another way of communicating to the media.

What Are They?

Many if not most on line editions of newspapers, at the end of many stories, provide an opportunity for readers to comment. This may be indicated by a block entitled "Comments" or some other space with that title.

Advantages

On line comments have several advantages over letters to the editor:

1. They are easier to have posted on line than getting a letter to the editor printed.
2. They may remain on line longer than the one day period in which a letter to the editor runs.

Although on-line comments may have to compete with other on-line comments for attention, they nevertheless provide an opportunity to communicate with the public that may otherwise be unavailable.

How to Comment on Line

To comment on line, media have instructions once you click on their "Comments" section. Some, like Jewish News Service, do not require any special procedures, while others do have basic rules but they are generally not hard to follow.

Most require you to comment either through your Facebook account, or by designating a user name and password. It is suggested that you have a user name and password that has enough characters so that you can use it for more than one account. If that is not possible, then you may need different user accounts and passwords for different media. You should keep records of your user names and passwords that you use for each account.

Most major Connecticut news publications have a comment section. In addition, the national publications, including New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY have comment sections. Significant Jewish publications, such as the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish News Service, the Washington Jewish Times and the Connecticut Jewish Ledger also have them.