Web Excursions 2022-04-11
The New York Times Would Really Like Its Reporters to Stop Scrolling and Get Off Twitter
This morning, in a series of memos from executive editor Dean Baquet and deputy managing editor Cliff Levy,
the Times made it clear that it would like staffers to shoo away the little blue bird on their phones —
or at least not feed it as often.
The memo reads “If your role is to find out important facts and tell them to the world, is that the way you want to spend your day?”
The Times’ argument seems to reduce down to a few points:
Twitter takes up too much of journalists’ time.
It warps their reporting by changing who they see as their audience and the feedback they get on their work.
It’s a major driver of harassment and abuse.
Bad tweets are a significant reputational threat to the Times and its staffers.
a social media presence “is now purely optional” for journalists.
The Times is also expanding its team of people devoted to protecting its journalists from abuse online
[The memo also] reemphasizes some existing policies.
Reporters should “strengthen our commitment to treating information [on Twitter] with the journalistic skepticism that we would any source, story or critic.”
every tweet “needs to reflect the values of The Times and be consistent with our editorial standards, social media guidelines and behavioral norms.”
[Notable is] the flexibility that these new guidelines offer.
Reporters who were dragged kicking and screaming to Twitter can now leave
without thinking their online silence will show up on their performance review
Q&As
This largely refers to Twitter. What about other social platforms?
No matter what platform you’re on, you should always represent The Times’s values and defend and uphold our independence.
We want to ensure that all Times journalists treat information on Twitter with the journalistic skepticism that we bring to any source, story or critic.
If it’s a helpful input to covering your beat, please continue to use it as one out of many for your reporting.
But it should rarely, if ever, be your primary reporting focus
We also pride ourselves on supporting Times journalists in expanding their visibility through other channels.
We have approved to date well over 90 percent of the requests that we receive from our journalists to pursue independent projects, including books and movies.
on television and other platforms
And we work closely with our journalists to produce in-house television programs, podcasts and much more that feature them and their stories.
Q: What constitutes criticizing, attacking or undermining colleagues’ work?
In recent years, we have seen more instances of Times journalists using Twitter to criticize the work of their colleagues, rather than addressing concerns directly or through internal channels.
This often exacerbates criticism from outside The Times, and can stoke and legitimize harassment and online attacks.
Employees have important lawful rights to speak up about terms and conditions of employment or about the facts that are underlying claims of harassment and discrimination.
taking on trolls is a bad idea.
If you do choose to respond, we strongly encourage you not to do so without first consulting with an editor.
We also encourage you to reach out to Standards or the Audience team
You shouldn’t break news on Twitter unless you’re also including a link to our reporting.
In rare instances, under the explicit guidance of a department head or masthead editor, you may be asked to break news on Twitter without linking to a story.
We strongly encourage all Times employees to live up to the spirit of this guidance.
The Threat Response Team is made up of experts from numerous departments across the company, including information security, international security, corporate security, legal and corporate communications.
You know, when I became editor, which was after the Innovation Report, we didn’t order people to get on Twitter, but we pushed them to.
In fact, I can remember people pushing me to go on Twitter.
I think that there were a bunch of people at the Times who thought we wanted them to live on Twitter as much as they do.
And over time, we realized we didn’t want them to do so.
It eats up too much time.
there are journalists, at The New York Times and elsewhere, who tweet many, many, many, many, many times a day. Some people tweet about the minutiae of their lives. To me, that’s time not spent actually reporting. So that’s one of the dangers.
Q: A lot of these issues were raised in the back-and-forth between Taylor Lorenz and Maggie Haberman not long ago on the use of the word “brand” in journalism, and the idea of the reporter having their own individual brand. How do you think about the tension between a reporter’s brand and the Times’ brand, which might be its single most valuable asset?
I think that if I’m a reporter and I tweet something unfortunate, or tweet something that’s too opinionated, or tweet something that is even nasty, it hurts me.
And if it hurts me, it hurts The New York Times too.
Q: whatever the line is that a reporter shouldn’t cross, do you see that line being uniform across the newsroom, or is different for different people, depending on what that person is covering? How you’re defining colleagues?
In this case, “colleagues” means everybody who works at The New York Times For us, it’s everybody
Q: There are occasions, for instance, in which, you know people in Opinion actually respond to columnists for the Post or elsewhere, and they have disagreements that sometimes feel within their realm. When the Tom Cotton op-ed was published, a number of newsroom staffers tweeted statements criticizing Opinion for running it. Is that something that would be not allowed under this policy?
I’m probably not going to get into specifics.
Q: is there any other online venue that you would like people to be spending more time on?
I would like the time you don’t spend on Twitter to be spent reporting. Finding stuff out.
If somebody were to say, “Okay, I was spending too much time on Twitter. How does the New York Times want me to spend my time?”
I would say: Go find some stuff out. Go do some reporting.