Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:
NPR is the latest media group to axe online comments: NPR announced that its main website would no longer support online comments. The feature will be disabled on NPR.org beginning Aug. 23. Scott Montgomery, managing editor for digital news, said that much of the discussion and engagement among NPR listeners was happening on social media channels rather than in the comments section. The comments NPR does receive both trended toward negative behavior and were not calculated to be representative of the broader public radio audience. Several prominent media outlets have done away with comments, and that appears to be an ongoing trend in building engaged online audiences.
NextRadio hybrid app targets monetization: Radio World ran a profile of the NextRadio app, a hybrid radio program designed to offer both digital and broadcast radio via smartphones. TagStation said it believes the efforts to monetize the app will take off in 2017 as a growing number of wireless providers activate the FM chips in their phone models. “To have a significant portion of all carriers on board now is huge,” NextRadio President Paul Brenner said. “We have been able to accelerate distribution of the product quicker than thought.”