The technology that allows readers to post anonymous online comments on newspaper websites gives readers unprecedented opportunities to participate, but poses challenges to the journalistic value of transparency, practice of gatekeeping, and conception of expertise. This nationwide survey of 583 U.S. journalists explores whether the technology has affected their work practices, workplaces, or news coverage. The study, grounded in social shaping of technology theories, finds that journalists are not opposed to sharing their web platforms with readers' comments, but dislike user anonymity and ignore reader input. Despite the technological affordance that provides journalists a means to receive instant, global feedback from readers, journalists are maintaining their jurisdiction over news content and are not participating with readers in mutual shaping.This study finds that journalistic norms and conceptions of expertise prevent journalists from engaging with readers.

A survey at 36 newspapers shows journalists feel strongly that readers should have the ability to comment online, but they also dislike the verbal ‘free-for-alls’ and personal attacks in these comments. Only 35 percent say they frequently or always read online comments on their stories.

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Multiple and overlapping forms of oppression-what Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlè Crenshaw (1989) called intersectionality-is slowly emerging in the scholarship of journalism and mass communication (JMC). Intersectionality is particularly used to reveal the structural relations of power that denote hierarchies of privileges and punishment. Crenshaw (1989) argued that oppression is a complex phenomenon whose analysis must consider multiple characteristics of identity, including gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, physical ability, and so on. In the process of adaptation, JMC scholars tend to apply the term variously as a concept, a theory, a methodology, and even praxis. Crenshaw herself opened the door to various categorizations of the term. In one of her early statements, she insisted that intersectionality was not being offered "as some new totalizing theory of identity" but rather as a provisional concept linking politics with postmodern theory and suggesting a methodology to "disrupt the tendencies to see race and gender as exclusive or separable" (emphasis added) (Crenshaw, 1989(Crenshaw, , p. 1244.This forum began as a session at the AEJMC conference in Detroit in August 2022, organized by George L. Daniels, for the purpose of broadening scholarly discourse on the use of intersectionality in JMC research. The authors of this Forum, who were presenters at that session, illustrate the range of possibilities in these synopses of longer papers presented at that session. Carolyn M. Byerly was the discussant and Bey-Ling Sha was the moderator for that conference session. Rachel L. Grant's essay emphasizes intersectionality's utility as both theory and praxis in her race and gender analysis of news messages about gymnast Simone Biles and former Miss U.S.A. Cheslie Kyst. George L. Daniels applies intersectionality as a theoretical framework to examine race, gender, sexuality, and class in his study of masculine identity among men of color. Mikayla Pevac's essay illustrates how intersectionality can be used as a normative theory by organizations doing preventive education on gender-based violence, which offers a framework for creating messages for diverse audiences. Carolyn Nielsen's essay emphasizes the importance of examining multiple identities in mass media research, showing in the process the utility of intersectionality as both a theory and a method for studying media messages and audience effects.