Online comments are broken. What alternatives exist?

Back in the 90s, I was at the forefront of the push for media outlets to add the ability to comment to news articles, in the belief that this would enhance public dialog - a belief which turns out to have been wildly mistaken.

The primary problem I see now is that news articles are collapsing under the weight of their own commentariat. A few minutes ago, for example, I was reading an article at The Hill, a popular political reporting website. I was about to comment but decided it would be a waste of time given the already high volume of comments. Having the day off, I went to take a shower instead. 15 minutes later there were an additional 750 comments.

Please note that I'm not addressing the content or sentiment of newspaper comments (poor as the former or disagreeable as the latter may be to any given reader). The sheer volume makes meaningful discussion impossible, and without meaningful discussion social spaces become little more than vessels of mob containment. Does anyone have ideas for how to address this?

* Please avoid falling into standard 'liberal vs conservative' mudslinging, I've avoided discussing specific content because this strikes me as a general problem rather than one limited to people of a particular political orientation.