Our friend Andrew from The Coral Project just published this! I like his food bank analogy. And this section is particularly strong:

"The current process goes like this: Journalist writes an article. Article is published. People write comments. Journalist peeks at the comments, and sees a lot of meanness and abuse (especially if they’re a woman, a person of color, or especially a woman of color). Journalist vows not to engage with such horrid readers. The organization listens to its journalists when they say that comments are worthless and puts fewer resources into them. The comments then get worse due to lack of engagement and strategy, leaving the space to a small number of argumentative types corralled by a tiny battled-hardened community team."

Also, this part really hits the nail on the head re: publisher objectives & metrics:

"Let’s start with three of the key metrics that advertisers care about: number of views, time spent on a page, and the loyalty of the audience. Who spends the most time on the page? People reading comments after the article and engaging in the discussion. Who creates multiple page views? Commenters who return to reply to conversations they’re involved in. Who are the most loyal audience members? Almost certainly your commenters."

I really only have one issue with this article which is that I disagree with this: "There is no single approach or tool that will work everywhere," because... well... reallyread.it :)