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North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record and Herald News, is restricting comments on northjersey.com to readers who use social media and identify themselves.
The unannounced change was made last week. Before that, readers who registered with the online news site could comment using a pen name or other alias.
It's unclear whether readers without a Facebook account can comment on stories and columns.
Eye on The Record can only speculate on why the change was made.
In the past, criticism of Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski has been withering.
Critics have focused on his often inaccurate reporting and advice, and on how he has strayed far from his column's mission of going to bat for all commuters, not just drivers.
In general, comments on northjersey were civil, but there were a number of unhinged individuals who attacked each other viciously.
The Record of Woodland Park and other newspapers will only print letters from readers who provide their full name and town, and provide a telephone number for confirmation.
Eye on The Record received this comment last week:
What is the story with the NorthJersey.com site and it's new set-up for posting comments? Please let your readers know about the facts and your opinions of this issue in one of your future articles. It appears the old Comments posting system was eliminated this week sometime around Wednesday. It appears that all comments, which were posted with previous news articles, are no longer viewable. It appears that one can no longer log in to NorthJersey.com with their existing username, which typically was anonymous, in order to post comments. When clicking on the "Most Commented" tab, it no longer shows a list of articles. The "Most Read" and "Most E-mailed" tabs still bring up a list of articles. It appears that the new system requires you to have a Facebook account and log in to Facebook before you can post a comment. Currently, all comments appear to be only from Facebook users. Obviously, posting anonymously is much more difficult since most people with Facebook accounts use their own names, along with their pictures. It seems that the Record may have gotten tired of allowing some of the anonymous posted comments, which in some people's opinions may have been objectionable or controversial. While this new policy may be politically correct and an attempt to weed out the "controversial" anonymous individuals, who posted, I believe that it is a bad policy since it will restrict free speech and the free flow of information, will invade people's privacy by opening their Facebook accounts to unwanted public scrutiny by others, and force people, who have absolutely no interest in joining Facebook or any of the other social media sites due to concerns about privacy and identity theft. The number of posted comments with this new system has dramatically decreased. If you happen to find out anything that dramatically contradicts the facts that I have stated, I would appreciate an individual response to me. Otherwise, feel free to take the lead and alert your readers to this new situation.
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