The Internet can be a nasty place

There's a lot of nastiness out there, a relentless tide of vicious insults and negativity borne across cyberspace on the magic carpet of anonymity. The irrational anger this week prompted me to stop "following" a blog that had initially intrigued me a few weeks ago. A friend tipped me off to the McClatchy Watch blog, and I began following it. I read the e-mails and explanations for all the layoffs at McClatchy papers across the country and about the continuing fall of McClatchy stock, which had gone from more than $50 a share when the California company bought Knight-Ridder's newspaper chain in 2006 to less than 50 cents a share.

With thousands of layoffs in the company, I expected some anger and bitterness, but the most vindictive comments (nearly all anonymous) were not about newspaper layoffs but about alleged bias in news coverage. Comments accused the Miami Herald (a former Knight-Ridder flagship) of being a communist organ. Others accused newspapers in general of promoting a socialist or communist agenda. Several comments relished the thought that newspapers would go out of business, leaving thousands and thousands more journalists out of work.

The final straw, after I had tolerated these misinformed rants while seeking the occasional news about McClatchy papers, was an attack on an ad created by the N.C. Press Association. NCPA and its member papers (of which I used to be a part) have been waging a campaign against a bill in the General Assembly that would eliminate the requirement for public notices to be published in general circulation newspapers, allowing governments to post notices on web sites instead. The ad that McClatchy Watch found offensive depicted an older woman who complained that she didn't surf the net for notices about zoning or public meetings. She wanted the notices to remain in her newspaper, and she reminded legislators that she and her friends voted. The blog post ridiculed NCPA for stereotyping senior citizens, for attempting to hang onto profitable public notices and for standing in the way of progress.

I responded to the blog with a comment (using my Erstwhile Editor nom de guerre), saying that I thought the blogger was being too harsh. The ad was politically savvy because older Americans are more likely to vote, and it was only one of four ads NCPA had designed and the only one that addressed the older readers aspect.

Well! Anonymous commenters accused me of being a McClatchy toady, of owning worthless McClatchy stock, of discriminating against the elderly, of being stupid, of being part of the leftist conspiracy to overthrow America, of being part of the dead trees plutocracy, etc., etc. I could have responded that I own no McClatchy stock (and never did)  and never worked for a McClatchy newspaper, but what would be the point?

I just quit following the blog. A generation schooled on cable televisions screamfests have forgotten how to listen to other opinions and how to show respect to those who disagree with them. Political discourse may never recover.