I never use the Strib’s comment feature, if you’re wondering. I have never made an appearance there. I don’t call Nick a degenerate. All the other stuff, hmmm…yea.

I read the column, of course, and was not in any disagreement. I am a Target hater, I’m sure $5 - $10 k of annual income is spent there. A great column could be written on how this came about, how it is that Minnesota women think they need to go there every day.

I’m sure what happened is largely as you speculate. They habitually enable / disable the comments feature for any number of things they deem sensitive. Particularly on crime stories.

LAMBERT: I'm still asking if this was the first time they wiped the entire slate. If so, why?

The big thing, of course, would be Target’s weekend circular. What do those cost? I was under the impression the number was in the multiple tens of thousands per weekend. Not like they’d ever cancel it.

Count me in as someone happy they removed the comments. I read the Strib website fairly often and the comments really cheapen the feel of the site. It's always a bunch of morons arguing left versus right or taking cheap shots at the writer.

The blogs I regularly read have moderated comments. That keeps the crap out of them (well except for Bertram).

I'm not a big Coleman fan by any means. He never responds to email or engages with his readers. But even Coleman doesn't deserve some of the junk tossed out there at him. Coleman gets paid to make people react and I respect that part of his work.

I'm sure Target being a big advertiser played into this. The Strib would be smart to post a formal policy on comments and how they are edited.

Didn't Nancy Barnes write a column a few weeks ago about how the Strib reserved the right to yank comments on stories if they felt the comments were "abusive." Looks like they are exercising that "right" in this case. Pathetic.

LAMBERT: In this case they yanked everything.

Interesting fodder for the weekend... The Strib is starting to sound like that Chinese newspaper that pulled the story on the 13, I mean 16-year old gymnasts with ugly blue eyeshadow.

LAMBERT: As i say, there may be a simple and innocent explanation. But if there is you'd think they tell someone. Coleman, Guild reps, anyone, if not me.

More sins of omission, Bri:

Target's policy is that no cash refund is available for 7 days after purchasing with A CHECK, as granny did. (Who writes checks anymore?)

That's a rather reasonable business policy.

You fail to mention that, and it is the ENTIRE point of Coleman's story, but as usual, he took time off from habitually fellating commie child molesters to write his standard "old granny wronged by corporate titan" column.

What's the big deal? There's no real basis for granny's "complaint".

Stop dropping the pertinent details.

LAMBERT: You really ought to try reading the source material before taking one of your "fire, ready, aim" stances.

As you write, Brian: "I e-mailed the Strib's Will Tacy, their digital guru, and Nancy Barnes, their top editor, with no expectation at all that they'd respond ... and they haven't."

Pathetic, running from the truth-seekers while they purport to be same. The brass at that place sold out a long time ago. When you get used to running scared and bowwing to authority, the way the journalists there have done to Avista, it gets easier to do the second, third and hundredth times.

Or maybe caving in to Target Corp. is the Strib's ill-advised attempt to prove it can balance the scales, after decades of being anti-big business in this market.

LAMBERT: If Tacy and Barnes want to ignore me -- and David Brauer, and the very few others with any news interest in their operation, that's fine. But with something like this, what is the point of ignoring their own writers -- unless the explanation is an embarrassment?

Target: Redder than Wal-Mart - Ever see that headline? An examination of political giving by Wal-Mart and Target showed Target gave a higher percentage to Republicans. A few years ago I discovered Target had slipped the Center of the American Experiment $25,000 - but the documentation was nowhere to be found, except in the CAE 990. Target never got back to me about that one.

LAMBERT: I'm aware of that. In this case, I'm not certain that Target even knew about the comments.

Hmmmm, I'd be more worked up, I guess, if they spiked Coleman's column. I make it a rule to avoid most of the comments on the Strib's site for the reasons you burlesqued in your post. Reading your man, Bertram, Jr. is depressing enough.

If Target thinks getting the comments to Coleman's column spiked protects their image as a retailer, they don't understand how most of us read the "paper" on line. We read the column, or a straight news piece, and then we move on, confident in our opinion about what we've just read, if we have one, without checking to see what the trolls have to say on the matter.

LAMBERT: Again, my read is that the Strib axed the comments with little or no input from Target. I don't know that. But that's the sense I'm getting.

.

Well, if that's the case, then they oughta' just put in their applications with the shoe department at Macy's and be done with it. Or, wait, what am I saying, customer service at Target. Sheesh!

Whatever the case, they owe the basic professional courtesy of a call back, for cryin' out loud. If you're just a blogger, what's Lileks? You're writing for the website of a widely read Twin Cities monthly magazine, not a personal time- killer by some pajama-clad shut-in. Though, come to think of it, I don't see you out much. Dude, tell me they're not the kind with the feet in 'em.

But ultimately I'm far too distracted with trying to decide if I should color what's left of my gray hair. Now THAT'S hard-hitting journalism.

LAMBERT: I do my best work in boxers and a t-shirt. (I know, TMI).

The one thing in all this that I'm fairly confident of is that these comments were not pulled in response to Target. They were pulled preemptively. Target is too big, too savvy, its focus too broad to care about comments on the Strib's website.

But we were having this very discussion yesterday, Brian, about what we've lost as newspapers shrink and cower. Losing the worthless comments on the ST's website improves the site in many eyes, including mine. But the point is what it symbolizes: a newspaper so marginalized by the new economy that it can't operate without fear or favor.

Now I'd argue that has never been the cast at the ST. I've watched it cower to maintain access with powerful figures or corporations, overreact to cage-rattling by advertisers, ignore enterprise stories because it would rile someone up the paper needed quotes from. It's just more obvious these days.

LAMBERT: My esteemed colleague, Mr. Platt. blogs at http://msp.blogs.com/adamplatt/. This story would only get juicier if Target called Barnes and demanded she pull the comments. But it's hard to imagine TWO major local institutions terrified of fall-out from bratty ... customers.

It's quite possible that the comments were pulled because of complaints from Plymouth citizenry. Plymouth likes to think of itself as conflict-free, and we prefer that bickering couples move, angry parents applaud the work of incompetent T-ball umpires and crotchety old women not make a scene. Why we were unable to have the column itself re-edited to present Plymouth in its pure and proper light astounds me.

LAMBERT: Are you saying Plymouth is our purest suburb? You are aware of Edina, aren't you?

I've got to believe that the PiPress' comments section is the worst online forum that has originated in these Twin Cities. The bile there rivals only some soft-racist forums.

For all of the vitriol that the Strib gets (a lot of it righteous, mind you), they should have never aped the other online newspapers and opened up a comments section. Isn't that what LTEs and blogs are for? What, if anything, are they trying to foster?

LAMBERT: Everyone is trying to foster a reasonable dialogue. in my experience it only takes one un-moderated troll to discourage the sensible.

Edina? Where's that?

LAMBERT: According to my tax statement it is within the drop of a lotus leaf from the Garden of Eden.

Oh baby...sunny times at the Strib, no? I mean direct, irrefutable confirmation that at least 350-400 people are actually still reading the paper! So what's to get worked up over? Everybody knows that people who post comments online are, like, total losers.

LAMBERT: "Losing" of course is a relative term.

It appears as if even "ClaudeNRick" (TM)have been relegated to writing about recreational real estate....instead of their usually blatant 'manual of mansex'.

I think things are definitely looking up on Portland Ave!

Er, get ready for the State Fair onslaught, though....

LAMBERT: Stop by the Star Trib booth. They'll be happy to have their picture taken with you.

I'm sure I wouldn't know. Oh...and by the way...did you see The Atlantic's reporting from inside the failed Clinton campaign? Turns out SHE was the problem. How very surprising.

LAMBERT: Bertram has Edwards. You have Hillary.

Maybe with Katherine Kersten's column they could just run the reader comments and not the column. Yes, I see the logical fallacy. It's a homage to Kitty.

LAMBERT: Watch for my first "Lambert to the Slaughter" competition.

So...you're comparing me with Bertram. Until now, I never gauged the depth of your cruelty. Have you no shame sir?

LAMBERT: Clearly, no.

I think Katherine made a very good point today regarding some recent rather breathless Strib coverage of MMA cage fighting and "that crotch shot bar".

Does anyone know what their current policy is regarding comments? Maybe they've established somewhere that they will pull comments at will. As the Managing Editor of UGC for WRAL.com, I create most of the policies regarding comments on news stories, but we also have a team of moderators who enforce these policies. We moderate, and I stand firm in the belief that all news organizations should moderate comments. Perhaps if they did, this problem may not have been as big.

LAMBERT: Unmoderated comments are an invitation to invasion and corruption by the lowest denominator. But moderated comments boards open host companies to legal risk in that they are making specific judgment on what stays and what doesn't. In the Strib's case, I've assumed the policy was that they would weed out the profane and racist. In this case they weeded everything.

"We moderate, and I stand firm in the belief that all news organizations should moderate comments."

Good for Angela Connor. Trouble with the Strib is that they would need to have proper staffing levels to moderate comments. And those jerks weren't even willing to pay the old gals who answered the phones.

Newspapers would be more believable in their development as Internet-driven media companies if they weren't shrinking staff at the very time they're adding work (i.e., two media platforms vs. one). Any moron-boss who utters the nauseating "more with less" cliche should get smacked upside the head before she or he gets to the word "with."

LAMBERT: The idea that your staff of employees will continue to add internet tasks to their daily regimen (at no additional compensation) and not have it effect the quality of their work for the bills-paying product simply isn't sustainable. Eventually something snaps.