Apparently, it's by putting the wrong information into a story about the prime minister and communion wafers.

And as a result, Shawna Richer is no longer the editor of the St. John Telegraph-Journal and Jamie Irving (yes, of those Irvings) is no longer the publisher.

Venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson is a big fan of online comments on news sites, and offers this advice:

I agree that simply adding a comment thread at the end of a news story is a recipe for trouble. But it is only a recipe for trouble if that is as far as you go. An unattended comment thread will be full of garbage and many are.

But if the author of the news story, or opinion piece, or blog post, tends to the comments, replies to the good ones, signals the bad ones, chastises the loudmouth bullies, and generally runs the comment threads like a serious discussion group, a serious discussion will result.

It's an issue for the news industry because tending to comment threads is not part of a journalist's traditional job. But I would argue that it is now and they ought to get busy doing it. For one, the journalists that do it and do it well will be better read. And they'll be better informed. They'll get tips in the comment threads. They'll get constructive criticism that will help them do their job better. And they'll get leads on new stories before others will.

Unfortunately, no one really follows his advice -- at least so far as I can see.

And so we get this.

The Torontoist noticed the bizarrely vitriolic tone of the online commenters at major Toronto news websites during the five-week-old civic strike and collected a possibly representative sample (although one might hope they were wildly sensationalizing).