Practicum 5 - Caitlin Lundquist

I commented on the article “Gingrich Tells Romney He Will Quit Race” in the New York Times.  I found this article in the Politics section of the website and although it was not the homepage of the website, it was the major headline in this section and also had a picture so I figured it would be a good article to comment on.  One thing I noticed about the article was that there were much fewer comments on it, only 36 comments had been made, although the article was published fairly recently, it is nowhere near as many comments on the Fox news site.  I noticed that most of the comments were longer and attempted to discuss frustrations with the article.  Although many of them were angry comments, fewer comments involved name calling and they also had a bit more length to them than the ones on Fox news.  I commented with a question because I felt this would be the best way to receive a reply.  I wrote “What new policies will Romney have to adopt to gain support of Gingrich's supporters, or do you think conservative ideal are enough to gain the support of his supporters?  Why do you think Gingrich's debt was discussed in this article, or do you feel this is relevant to the topic at hand?”  My comment was not posted right away and when I wrote my comment it asked for my full name and location before it would post my comment.  So far none of the comments had any replies, but people can like comments and also it takes a while for the paper to post my comment. 

My Comment was finally posted along with another 40 or so.  I think the method of not instantly posing comments is an attempt to avoid outright fighting in the comment section because comments cannot be written and posted simultaneously.  Unfortunately, this also slows the discussion and my comment is far enough down on the board that people will probably not be responding to my questions.