Which much-disdained, 20th-century innovation are newsrooms exploring again, with a distinct 21st-century flavour?

The answer is the comments section. You know, that cesspool of toxicity editors reluctantly had to wade into and which many news organisations abandoned because they were too much work for very little visible benefit.

Yet, comments are seeing a bit of a revival as newsrooms return to them as a way to engage their subscribers and create communities.

Consider this initiative at Denmark’s JP/Politikens Hus. 

Politiken’s ambition is to become the best place for public debate in Denmark for their subscribers instead of letting those conversations happen on Facebook and elsewhere. 

“The idea of editorial offices and newsrooms that see themselves solely as transmitters of information needs to change,” Troels Behrendt Jørgensen, digital director at Politiken, told me.

The key shift in making the comments section work well came from treating it as a subscriber product that is owned by the newsroom, Jørgensen said. Editorial management sets the rules of engagement and participates in the debates.

For each story, the journalist simply chooses “yes” or “no” on whether to open comments. The rule of thumb is to open them where there’s a clear editorial perspective and potential for meaningful debate rather than just high emotion (e.g., crime stories that generate heat but little value).

The conversations are highly visible:

• A front‑page module highlights “today’s liveliest conversations” and links into active discussions.

• At the bottom of stories, Politiken promotes other articles with strong debates.

• Crucially, editors and reporters — including the editor‑in‑chief — reply in the threads, signalling these spaces matter editorially.

• Editors can see a dashboard that gives them insights about comments and readers’ attitudes, which drives discussions in the newsroom.

Politiken made several deliberate choices to keep the environment constructive:

• Only subscribers can comment, so identity and payment act as a natural quality filter.

• Editors close comments at night on very heated threads, and they share moderation duties across the newsroom.

• They delete “meta comments” (complaints about moderation or “censorship”) to focus on the issue, not on fighting about the comment system.

• They moderate comments without AI, which is still feasible given their scale and a 24‑hour legal requirement to remove toxic content. 

Since launch in August, they have seen significant growth in both the number of comments and the number of unique commenters, as well as a rising proportion of articles with comments.

The new system is “creating a positive place” where people want to read and participate, Jørgensen said.

What can other newsrooms learn from this?

1. Editorial ownership is non‑negotiable. If product or tech “own” comments, culture and quality suffer. When the newsroom owns them, moderation and participation become part of journalism.

2. Keep activation simple for journalists. A binary on/off switch tied to an editorial guideline is more effective than complex rules.

3. Treat comments as visible, valuable content. Featuring debates on the front page and at the end of stories raises their status and drives participation.

4. Set clear rules to protect the space. Subscriber‑only access, closing threads at night, and banning meta‑comments all contribute to a safer, more focused environment.

5. Measure and learn, but play the long game. Early KPIs show promising engagement, but the real bet is that a high‑quality conversation product will deepen loyalty over time.

We see other news organisations investing resources in comments as well. 

The beleaguered Washington Post is using AI to group and filter comments. Their chief technology officer Vineet Khosla points out that we all have thriving communities right under our noses — in our comments section — but we have moaned and complained as our readers have gone to social media to discuss our articles there instead.

So, The Post decided to facilitate conversations with a hands-on approach and nurture the behaviours they want to see. Now, if you go to the comments on a Washington Post article, you will be prompted to respond to AI-generated questions, which guide you towards staying on topic.

AI also classifies conversations according to their sentiment and creates summaries that help readers navigate each conversation. The news company says comment quality has gone up and that they are effectively building a community.

Similarly, at Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest newspaper, AI is being used to moderate comments in all but the trickiest cases. With half a million monthly comments, editors used to close comments before leaving for the day. Now, the volume of comments is higher, their subscribers are engaging more, and they see higher community stickiness.

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Banner photo: Adobe Stock By Karlaage.

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