Papers such as the New York Times have the staff to pre-screen comments before they are posted. The Missoulian and Ravalli Republic do not. And we do not have the technology or the staff to verify the identity of commenters. Even if we did, the best use of our reporters and editors is to gather the news and act as watchdogs in our communities, not as bird dogs for online comments.

To the tiny few who will claim that this decision is violating your First Amendment rights, you're mistaken. The Internet has given you more platforms than ever to make your views known. But we will no longer offer a platform that lets you do so anonymously.

While I know this is the right decision, making it was personally difficult. I instituted online commenting a decade ago at another news organization and did so with the belief that it would help break down the institutional walls between the newsroom and news readers.

The experiment was noble but, in hindsight, was doomed to fail because the vast majority of newsrooms do not have the resources to turn online commenting into a robust town square debate of the issues of the day.

So we're pulling the plug Monday. You can find our stories on Facebook and Twitter and can post them to any social site where you'd like to begin a discussion. But please keep it clean and keep it civil. We need, as a nation, to find better ways to talk with each other. This is our contribution to that important cause.

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