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If Target is powerful enough to get the largest newspaper in the state to pull comments on a story about their return policy, should I expect a knock on my door from red-shirted, khaki wearing enforcers?
Brian Lambert outlines the mystery of the disappearing Target comments on Nick Coleman’s column yesterday:
So what happened Thursday (yesterday) after Nick wrote a column about a 79 year-old Irish lady getting brusque treatment at a Plymouth Target? Well, by mid-morning something like 350-400 comments had piled up. Some were the usual suspects, accusing Nick of orally gratifying commie pedophiles, but a lot of the others were voicing their complaints about Target and its return policy. (The elderly Irish woman was returning a couple shirts and wanted $30 back … in cash.)
Some kind of nerve had been touched, which in the old days was a sign a columnist had done a good day’s work.
But then … poof … gone … all comments on Coleman’s Target column disappeared.
Target (aka. Walmart of the Midwest) used to pay kids to say nice things about them. And now we’re seeing “disappearing” critical comments on a StarTribune column.
Accentuate the positive?
Decentuate the negative?
Workin’ it from both ends.
What’s not clear is whether Target was directly involved in the StarTribune’s decision to pull comments regarding Target’s return policies or whether the StarTribune took it upon themselves to make their master proud. Regardless, The Deets is much less dependent on Target advertising revenue so don’t expect to see the StarTribuning of The Deets anytime soon.
For what it’s worth, Target Rounders program died a quiet death two weeks ago:
Maybe the dialing down of their misguided “Accentuate the Positive” strategy is what’s causing the new focus on decentuating the negative?
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Oh snap.
Any online whiz have access to an archive with the critical comments pre-doinkage?
The Strib does pull back comment threads on occasion, so this is not unprecedented in the abstract. Of course, it’s quite likely this is about protecting Target, but having the record would be good.
I doubt Target had anything to do with it, the STrib probably just didn’t want to continue the muck on that thread.
Taylor, that justifies pulling 90% of the StarTribune’s threads.
They must’ve finally hired some folks to tend to those pesky, blog-related issues.
not to be a target defender or anything, but maybe it just got too big? My guess is if it did they’d pull instead of close to save bandwidth. I’ve never seen a thread make it past 200 comments there before. God knows their technical team isn’t the brightest…