The dirty-minded pranks of a slew of naughty Web posters has brought an end to an online Los Angeles Times experiment in free-form journalism a mere two days after its inception.
Based on the model of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that allows people to add facts or update information, wikitorial gave readers a chance to add their comments to a 1,000-word editorial “War and Consequences,” which dealt with the Iraq war. Readers could add information, make changes, and “improve” upon the editorial by drawing their own conclusions. The online feature was introduced Friday, though it was down by Sunday morning—all because of a few dirty pictures.
According to Times deputy editorial page editor Michael Newman, all was fine for the first two days, with readers posting thoughtful comments throughout the editorial, until a post on self-proclaimed “news for nerds” site Slashdot.org inviting readers to participate in the Times experiment brought the unforeseen arrival of some pornographic photos.
Since readers could post without editorial approval, the pics were able to be added without reprimand, though Times webmasters quickly removed the objectionable material as soon as it was spotted. Even so, where there is a will, there is a way. Says Newman, “We were taking stuff down as soon as it went up and staving them off. Finally we had to go to bed. Someone called the newsroom a little bit before 4 a.m. and said ‘There’s something bad on your website,’ so we just took the whole site down.”
A note explaining wikitorial’s disappearance and thanking the “thousands” of people who logged on was posted later on Sunday. Editorial page editor Andres Martinez issued a statement of his own shortly thereafter.
“I was heartened by how seriously people took [the project],” he said. “I was really impressed by the level of high-minded participation.” Even so, he added, “It’s not a total shock it ended up this way. Now we will evaluate what this means.”
