The New Hampshire Union Leader has disabled the comments section on its website.
The paper’s president, Brendan McQuaid, said that responding to complaints and at times removing comments was taking up too much of the staff's time.
Regular commenters on the site were known to be outspoken with their views.
McQuaid said the change will hopefully transfer the comments onto social media. “Rather than have folks come to our site and have this relatively small group of people comment back and forth, we wanted to actually open it up to a broader conversation,” McQuaid said.
It’s not an unprecedented move. Media companies including Reuters and Bloomberg have killed their comment sections in recent years, partly because they’re so prone to abusive or obscene misuse.
