The Ventura County Star, a Californian newspaper (circulation: 200,000), has introduced comments on articles in 2005. Unfortunately (for them), they consider this input as a trick to increase pageviews rather than a conversation with their readers.

Comments aren’t moderated, be it before or after publication. Instead, at the end of last May, the Ventura County Star came up with the brilliant idea of automated vocabulary checks.

Use a swear word and you’ll see it blanked out once published. Use a bad swear word and you’ll be told to Watch your mouth! The word “p—-” is not allowed here.

Interestingly, internal guidelines in the newsroom do not preclude journalists from using the forbidden terms. A quick search within the Ventura County Star’s website reveals 218 occurrences of ‘suck’, 22 ‘pricks’, 9 ‘bitches’ and as many ‘whores’.

When you raise kids, you teach them not to swear even though you do curse all the time. That’s a game of deception that shows who’s got most authority.

But users don’t like being babysat. I suspect that treating readers as kids will discourage them from posting quality comments. No reader will give away valuable material in a sandbox. “Bad comments drive away good”. That’s the Gresham’s Law of the 21st century newsroom.

What Howard Owens calls one of the most internet-oriented newsrooms in the US doesn’t seem to get the new relationship journalists have to build with their audience. And that’s too bad, given how much information Californians are able to put together without any journalistic interference.