New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet has issued a Twitter "reset" for the newsroom, urging reporters to "meaningfully reduce" their twitter time and reminding them that tweets and subtweets attacking or undermining their colleagues are not allowed https://t.co/kM0OldIVxS
— Steven Perlberg (@perlberg) April 7, 2022
When An Individual of Merit has built themselves a (very *nice*, in every sense of the word) career out of assiduous resume-polishing, it is perhaps understandable that they resent underbred upstarts ginning up ‘a following’ by sharing ‘snark’ on some random techno-toy pleased to call itself ‘a media’.
Up with such tomfoolery, The Dean Baquet will not put!
"We eliminated the Public Editor position because we wanted to rely on Twitter as a reporting and feedback tool, but it turns out we don't like either the reporting or the feedback"?? https://t.co/nVaHx55gNe
— andi zeisler (@andizeisler) April 7, 2022
Honestly? The NYTimes should pay DougJ a substantial amount to pre-view their headlines, and their headliners, as a way of avoiding some of the most egregious public #FAIL in their timeline…
Why We’re Getting Off Twitter
Middle-class Trump supporters from flyover country threatening to hang us is important feedback. Middle-class liberals from flyover country threatening to ratio us is vile and disgusting.
by Dean Baquet
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) April 10, 2022
imo if you are not hung up on bad faith accusations, allowing your journalist employees to use twitter responsibly is not a particularly tough decision
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 8, 2022
But seriously, Spiers is quite correct:
I still maintain that unless you are very sure you have tenure at the Times, you should probably be on Twitter if you’re a journalist: https://t.co/vXVZpIQ4a7
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) April 7, 2022
not only does the NYT demonize twitter and hyperventilate about reporters having very normal human opinions online, they don't understand modern concepts like brigading or trolling, so they don't have reporters' backs when they're targeted by the angry right wing manbaby club
— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) April 7, 2022
the next decade desperately requires newsrooms and editorial leadership that fully understands the perils of bad faith authoritarian online propaganda or we are collectively and eminently fucked, for lack of a more technical term
— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) April 7, 2022
BONUS appearance, from a vintage blog chewtoy, Megan McArgleBargle!
That whole thread is hilarious for several reasons, not the least of which is the only reason she has a "career" (besides mommy and daddy of course) is due to firing off dipshit hot takes on the internet
— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) April 7, 2022
War for Ukraine Update 46: A Brief Update for Today
trollhattan
What happens to McMegan if she stares into a mirror while uttering “utterly toxic”?
guachi
I guess this is as good a time to post this suggestion as any. But with DougJ not posting here often I think a roundup every few days of the best DougJ tweets would be a good Open Thread type post.
NotMax
“I’m sure you think it hilarious but I don’t find #thepenismightier at all amusing.”
//
Redshift
McMegan is such a bad writer that I can’t figure out if she intended to say that labor organizing is “toxic for institutions,” or is she thinks there’s some other kind of “employees organizing against their employer,” or if she intended the “toxic” statement to only apply to “organizing against fellow employees.”
Of course, all off them are pretty idiotic statements.
RaflW
Finding out that a workplace is toxic, or abuses workers, or has a gender bias problem, or whatever it is that employees use twitter for transparency and exposure impairs business’s reputation capital.
Because of course McArglebargle is on the side of capital, not labor. One might suspect she’s glum that the asymmetric advantage is lessened by twitter organizing.
Betsy
DougJ for Preview Editor!
Seriously – how can we get together and propose this to the NYT decisionmakers?
It might save their sorry asses, and do some real good for the world.
Ivan X
I dunno. Without regard for its impact on their careers, I support journalists avoiding Twitter. The whole medium is engineered for hot takes and taking sides as quickly as possible on any given topic, neither of which are part of good journalism.
jl
If I were a reporter for a place like the NYT, or WaPo, etc. I sure would want to spend some of my day tweeting information out to the public directly. In fact I’d need to do it to keep my blood pressure and nerves under control. Pretty much every day there would be some information important for the public to know that I would not want to trust the corporate editorial BS machine. Which IMHO is run by an incompetent and corrupt bunch of jackasses.
jl
Just to ensure civility and keep BJ blog paying for itself, I did not intend to call Mr. Banquet a jackass. Mr. Baquet is a meretricious corporate functionary and old rich fart.
divF
@jl: “meretricious” has two meanings: one is “flashy, but without substance”; the other, “whorish”. I don’t think there is any definition of flashy that could conceivably apply to Mr. Baquet.
ETA: I personally like the description “ass-licking poseur”. Since I first heard the phrase from a character being played by Wallace Shawn, I think it is sufficiently high-toned to meet the standards you are proposing.
NotMax
@jl
Ageist! Cashist! Gasist!
:) //
Yutsano
I’m…pretty sure he’s happy with his day job.
scav
Seriously. Attempting to reset a policy of tweets from that murmuration of twits? King Canute weeps.
James E Powell
@Ivan X:
Are you suggesting that without twitter they’d be good journalists? Twitter just makes their flaws more visible. That”s what Baquet is concerned about.
piratedan
I think Mr. Bacquet has larger concerns, i.e. how come so many of his employees from journos to management support fascists….. but apparently that would imply that they actually think that’s a problem.
For some reason these guys think that they need access to write a story, yet the biggest investigative story of modern times sure as hell didn’t require access to the Nixon inner circle.
opiejeanne
@piratedan: Excellent point.
Aussie sheila
@piratedan:
Yes. I am old enough to remember the Watergate drama. And yet, Woodward’s subsequent career has been spent tirelessly writing down what insiders tell him (checking it of course, against other insider accounts), while revealing nothing at all about how the US was subject to a serious coup attempt, and why about 30% of the US electorate seems ripe for authoritarian ethno nationalist government. Truly he had his day, and it’s roughly 50 years behind him.
Brachiator
@Ivan X:
True enough that often Twitter is nothing but fatous hot takes. But there are other sides of this as well.
The Times (any Times in any city) prints letters to the editor that agree or disagree with a story, or which offers a useful and reasonable correction. But often the letter writer is some esteemed or Establishment figure. And a newspaper can be very selective or ignore letters to the editor.
Twitter is like a letter to the editor on steroids. At best a Twitter conversation might entirely refute a reporter’s story or demolish a pundit’s supposedly wise and sober judgment about a public issue.
I have seen a reporter or pundit get defensive or refuse to back down or reconsider a story, clearly letting their pride get in the way. Editors might continue to back a reporter, or keep digging where there is nothing to be found, because they hate looking like fools.
All of this proceeds from an old model of journalism in which newspapers presume that they are the learned and well trained experts who are informing a passive and ignorant public about what they should know.
Twitter is often wild, unruly, inaccurate, angry and a waste of time. But it also provides real time corrections to lazy, inaccurate and wrong-heading reporting.
Brachiator
@piratedan:
I think it was Seymour Hersh who suggested that the reason the NY Times at first missed the significance of Watergate was because they had a daily or weekly afternoon phone call with Henry Kissinger, who assured them that nothing was going on. Similarly, the WaPo political beat writers believed the Beltway insiders who were lying to them.
A huge amount of reporting depends on reporters having friendly relations with the people they cover because they need them to provide background or confirmation or to give them story leads. Also, the news media like to pretend that they are cynical and “objective,” but over time they become insiders and protectors of the Establishment.
Joey Maloney
Just in the past couple of days I’ve seen journalists (on Twitter) write about how being on Twitter and social media in general is vital to their careers. Unless you’re a McArglebargle or a Friedman or a Brooks, granted a prestigious sinecure from which they will never be dislodged, you have to build your “brand”. Because the NYT could downsize your ass at any moment. You need to be able to show the next potential employer that you have a following and they will in fact follow you to your new perch.
And the way to do that now is to interact with your public as directly and personally as possible, and that means social media.
Asparagus Aspersions
As it’s an open thread, I’d just like to say I’m tired after staying up too late waiting for French election results to come in, and now have to spend the next two weeks biting my nails that Le Pen could win. I know she’s not supposed to, but Clinton was also surefire bet to best Trump, so since 2016 I never take anything for granted.
One thing’s for sure: The left and right as have been traditionally understood the last few election cycles are dead. The 2017 election had already Illustrated a major upheaval, with the Socialist party only getting 6 percent of the vote. This time around it was the traditional right that crumbled, with only about 5 percent. People have sorted themselves into extremes, with Macron now representing the space that used to be occupied by the center-right, Les Républicains.
Now LR had lurched rightward, Ina desperate and ultimately futile attempt to peel off Le Pen voters. Le Pen has benefited from comparisons to the odious Éric Zemmour, whose Trumpian levels of repulsiveness make it easier for her to pretend her shirt is a lighter shade of brown.
For lack of choice, we’re a Macron household. For now, we’re crossing our fingers trust Le Pen loses, andviable left-wing alternative to Mélenchon arises before the 2027 cycle.
VOR
@Aussie sheila: another example is Knight-Ridder getting the 2003 Gulf War WMD story right. The access journalists were talking to senior level people who lied. The K-R journalists talked to lower level people who told a different story.
Baud
We need a Twitter ethics panel.
@jl:
You’re supposed to save it for the book.
@Asparagus Aspersions:
?
lowtechcyclist
Is it just me, or is there a parallel between editors not wanting their reporters to spend too much time on Twitter, and bosses who want their staff back in the office?
In both cases, it would seem that the bosses/editors should be able to tell whether their staff/reporters are doing their jobs based on their work output. Maybe not on a day-by-day basis, but certainly over a period of months, say.
So in both cases, it’s really about the bosses’/editors’ insecurities. The bosses doesn’t feel so much like a boss without their staffs right there where they can see them, and the editors are upset that people on Twitter are pointing out the flaws in their paper’s reporting, and even (horrors!) ridiculing it.
Anyway, ‘too much time on Twitter’ should only be a thing if the quality and/or quantity of the reporter’s work has dropped off. You’d think the editors they report to would be capable of noticing that.
different-church-lady
Eventually I was proven right about Facebook. Eventually I will be proven right about Twitter.
Shalimar
@Aussie sheila: I think Woodward’s brightest day was The Brethren, half a decade after Watergate. Getting Burger to stab himself in the back was impressive.
debbie
@Asparagus Aspersions:
I don’t know how anyone can believe and support someone who suddenly moderates after years and years of far right nationalism.
Baud
@debbie:
People want to believe.
Matt McIrvin
Everyone used to dunk on Google+, but I think that if it rather than Twitter had been the favored social-media outlet of big-media types, we’d be in a better place. (Google made it poison by trying to force it on everyone as their identity platform, but as social media it was more like if you made a Facebook without the intentional pathologies. I suppose the problem is that the pathologies are how you drive engagement and make it huge. It did get worse as Google tweaked it to try to find a winning formula, and made it more Facebook-like.)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Probably why we can’t break into the top 10,000.
artem1s
meh, TFYNYT is just pissed that Twittler is looking to Elon and not them to shape discussion in their little echo chamber. They are taking their ball and going home if they don’t get to be the captain of the Mean Girls Club and bully all the weaklings on the playground.
If this actually means ‘serious’ media outlets will follow the FYNYT and finally abandon their obsession with this and other social media gossip echo chambers, great! Maybe their is some value to Baquet being a royal dick – he can go down in history (and will probably count it as a victory) as the man who made twitter irrelevant (sry, not sry, it already is – unless you are an autocrat trying to undermine democracy).
bjacques
@Baud: we have the pathologies, but evidently not the right sort of pathologies. //s
sorry, but that was just money left on the table…
evodevo
@debbie: I’m old enough to remember the “new Nixon” lol
Ken
What if instead of “Preview Editor” we give it a snazzier title? Something with gravitas and history behind it, something from Greek or Latin or Sumerian. Let me check my dictionaries… Ah, perfect. DougJ for Censor!
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano: Oh, sure. I was thinking of ‘Chief FTFNYT Gadfly’ as more of a side gig, DougJ takes his twitter-time and gets paid for it.
He’s got a kid, it’d be a nice college fund…
RAM
Dean Baquet is a cancer on American journalism.
TriassicSands
Please, Mr. Baquet, spend more time with your family. You know, like 100% of your time.