Podcast: ARLnow Commenter Dave Schutz

Anyone familiar with ARLnow and our little corner of the digital media universe knows that we have a prolific comment section.

Voices from every spectrum of the community can be seen weighing in on local topics, often just minutes after an article on any given topic publishes. Driving the comment section is a community of regular commenters that has developed over time, and one of the leading voices in that comment community is Dave Schutz.

Dave is an Arlington resident who’s active in civic life and has a political bent that one might call middle-of-the-road. He is noted for being one of the few commenters to use his or her real name in the comments.

Dave has some signature opinions that he shares often — that the county should acquire the two country clubs that reside in Arlington, and their extensive acreage, for instance. But aside from a couple idiosyncratic takes, Dave can often be described as a voice of reason in the midst of heated discussions — he helps, to some degree, to keep comment threads focused and civil, and to make the comment section more of a community.

We talked with Dave about the comment community on ARLnow, about our comment moderation, and about his opinions on various topics — a unilateral audio comment section, of sorts.

Listen below or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or TuneIn.