Freedom of Reach: how our local news landscapes have changed

When Facebook arrived I thought that having to reveal your identity would make things better. Boy, was I wrong.

Back in 2006, when The Hook, a now defunct alt-weekly I was working for in Charlottesville, Virginia, began putting all their stories online, one of the most dramatic changes was how the online comments under the stories grew. Sometimes there were as many as 400 comments under stories, with a greater word count than the story itself, and often the discu…