Comments on: The worst mea culpa I’ve ever seen

By: Brian Schwartz

Brian Schwartz — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:25:27 +0000

I've heard others say what a great guy Kurt is as well and I'm sure that is true. However, as Stephen mentioned above (and as we were tweeting back and forth about in the aftermath of his non-mea-culpa), now that we all know it's a wordpress engine powering the comments, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE FOR NOT FIXING THE PERSISTENT COMMENT PROBLEMS on stltoday.com.

This is a failure to do a job (if we believe there claims that they are doing their best to fix the comments). There are hundreds of commenting plugins / tools out there like DISQUS that are better than the joke of a system stltoday.com is using now.

Kurt shouldn't have contacted the school, but by now that point has been proved ad naseum. But my bigger concern is was he or whoever administers the site qualified to have the job in the first place? How they haven't fixed this problem prior to know is a joke. Kurt's response to this one vulgar post just exacerbates the existing problems with the site. Someone at STLToday needs to acknowledge this is a problem and make some steps to fix their problems or they are going to lose a ton of readership / views when the Globe site launches.

By: Kurt Greenbaum takes out a commenter | The Broad Brush

Kurt Greenbaum takes out a commenter | The Broad Brush — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:55:03 +0000

[...] Related article. [...]

By: Stephen Bolen

Stephen Bolen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:38:46 +0000

I agree - there's gotta be way more there than "Yo! The Post-Dispatch says that you posted the word 'pussy' on their blog - is this true?"

"I resign."

Also, thanks for the comment. I'm just tryin' to be helpful with some suggestions. Hopefully the STLToday.com folks take some of it seriously and act on their desire to actually clean up the community's comments on the site.

By: Stephen Bolen

Stephen Bolen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:35:16 +0000

I think posting Greenbaum's personal information went a bit too far…

But, then again, my information is out there for the world to see, so you do assume some risk.

(PS – don't post my information anywhere! LOL)

By: JSpaghetti

JSpaghetti — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:16 +0000

I love it when, in lieu of complaining, someone makes realistic suggestions on how to fix a problem. You've done exactly that. Excellent post.

I'm also glad that you were sure to mention the guy resigned. It's driving me crazy to read “he was fired”. I really hope the guy talks to the RFT. I'd love to hear his side of the story because it seems so cut and dry, “Hey, Joe, did you post the word 'pussy' on STLtoday – twice?” And then he just hands over a resignation letter. There has to be more to it.

By: Terry Blastenbrei

Terry Blastenbrei — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:58 +0000

Apparently someone posted Greenbaum's personal info on another site. Totally not cool, but when you piss people off…

By: Stephen Bolen

Stephen Bolen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:04:12 +0000

I really think the community moderation would be a good move – I'd certainly read more items if I knew I didn't have to wade south of the Mason Dixon/Common Sense & Decency line to find out what people thought of certain news items.

Outdated business models should be the least of the dead tree newspaper's worries. This kind of stuff travels faster and has much wider circulation.

By: Stephen Bolen

Stephen Bolen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:01:52 +0000

Thanks for your comments, Todd.

I'm sure Kurt is a good guy and quite savvy at what he does, but he really went over the line when he skirted what I would consider to be common sense ethics.

If you're going to bust someone's chops and go so far as to look up their IP address and submit it to the poster's place of employment and not do the same for the racist bile that's being spewed all over the P-D website, there's something seriously wrong.

By: KBestOliver

KBestOliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:54:04 +0000

This is a great post. It's interesting to me that the P-D seems to be laying people off left and right and they're still keeping someone who made a ridiculously egregious error in their supposed area of expertise.

The whole thing makes me want to read the P-D even less, which I did not think was possible.

By: tojosan

tojosan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:52:53 +0000

Glad you shared this with me. I know it's like people to pile on but there' s nothing untrue here. Kurt is a decent guy. He works hard. He tries hard. He messed up here.