[throwawaysea]

There’s value in a discussion being tied to the community of news readers as its own social environment. Twitter and Reddit have heavy, biased moderation that don’t even allow many legitimate viewpoints. Plus you have to deal with their user bases, who are strongly opinionated and would drown out the voices of dedicated followers of a newspaper. Just like any community subset has some value in its separation and identity, there is value in the news comment sections.