The innovative "open source" editorial experiment at the Los Angeles Times is over.
A piece in today's online edition announces that vandals have caused the paper to give up on letting readers create their own versions of editorials using the model popularized by Wikipedia.
The newspaper launched the experimental "wikitorial" Friday and killed it early Sunday after an unknown user or users posted explicit photos.
An announcement on the newspaper's website, http://www.latimes.com , said the feature had been removed "at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material."
But managers of the newspaper's editorial and Internet operations, which have undergone a number of changes in recent months, said they might attempt to resurrect online editorials written collectively by readers.
"As long as we can hit a high standard and have no risk of vandalism, then it is worth having a try at it again," said Rob Barrett, general manager of Los Angeles Times Interactive.
UncommonSense