Comments and Conlin

Like a lot of outside readers of Philly.com, I was dismayed to see that reader comments had been turned off for the news coverage of the molestation allegations aginst former Daily News columnist Bill Conlin, even though from my years writing and blogging here I also knew the reasons why this had happened. I'm thrilled that it's now been resolved in the best way possible:

But this story is also unusual because it involves a former employee. Readers have said that they want to be able to talk about it, and we want to ensure we are as transparent as possible regarding this story.

We have heard our readers, and we have added commenting to the stories (join in here).

This commenting is highly moderated. We're devoting special staffing to it, and we'll keep it up as this story plays out.

I have no idea how the Conlin story plays out, but the one thing that's a given is a need for overwhelming transparency by the Daily News and the Inquirer -- this is an encouraging step.