Dear Reader:
The Jewish Journal’s web site, jewishjournal.com, has restored its commenting feature.
When The Journal redesigned the site, we chose to leave the commenting option off. In its previous iteration, we found too many people chose to use commenting for ad hominem attacks. We decided to take the feature off until we could find a way to consistently monitor comments, and encourage the kind of lively and thoughtful discussion Jewish Journal readers expect.
Why are we bringing it back? Several reasons. First, our readers missed it. We received numerous requests to restore commenting. In print and online, The Journal publishes opinions from across the political and religious spectrum. People wanted to be able to talk back, weigh in, challenge or second these opinions, and we understood their frustration at being prevented from doing so. Secondly, as a community-based media organization, we believe in the mission in bringing in as many community voices as possible. Through the Internet, our “community” has grown to be international (about 70 percent of our traffic is outside our home base of Los Angeles). The Internet has given us the opportunity to broaden the conversation— not having comments prevented us from fully doing that. Lastly, we missed you. We missed having your insights, ideas, challenges, compliments and story leads. Comments were a constant source of all of those.
So please go ahead and comment. It’s free and easy. Let us know what you think. Comments will be monitored according to our terms of use, which you can read here. Occasionally we will use the comments as Letters to the Editor in our weekly print edition (remember print?). We encourage our writers, editors, contributors, bloggers and columnists to monitor comments and respond. The Jewish Journal has always been a place that gathers the widest possible variety of thoughtful opinion — we are very happy that you’ll be able to share yours with us, again.
Rob Eshman
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
