Editors who aren’t active on Twitter tell their newsrooms that we don’t all have to change. Journalists who aren’t active on Twitter choose to remain or fall behind.
I’m late to this round of a discussion that’s been going on intermittently since at least when I started advocating Twitter’s use by journalists in 2008. But I was tied up Monday when Mathew Ingram and some New York Times staffers discussed whether journalists need to use Twitter (on Twitter, of course). Ingram then blogged about the issue. The discussion was prompted by Buzzfeed’s “Quick Tour Of The New York Times’ Twitter Graveyard,” which exposed and mocked some Times staffers for their weak presence on Twitter, including Executive Editor Dean Baquet, who has tweeted twice. Update: Baquet has responded to this post.
Baquet at least has a photo for his avatar. Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel showed 13 Times staffers’ accounts with Twitter’s generic egg avatar, which is like shouting, “Someone made me start a Twitter account! There, done!”
Before I continue my criticism of the Times, I should note that the Times has some outstanding Twitter users, too many to call out here, but I’ll just mention Nicholas Kristof as an example of a Times staffer who would excel at his job without using Twitter but is even better at it because he excels at Twitter. On the whole, the Times is better than most newsrooms at using Twitter. But the Times never aspires just to be better than most. And the Times should aspire to be the best in its use of Twitter and any other valuable tool for journalists.
The “graveyard” that Buzzfeed mocked is absolutely a symptom of the Times culture problems described in the Innovation report that created so much stir earlier this year. And the continued weak presence by so many Times editors and staffers on Twitter is a fair, if incomplete, indicator of the staff’s response to the call to innovate.
Every single excuse Times staffers, or others, gave Ingram had about one grain of truth to it, but still was just an excuse. The excuses — which I won’t repeat here; you can read some in Mathew’s Storify — are as absurd as if reporters tried to make excuses for not taking notes. I’ve been in some situations where I couldn’t take notes, and I was able to do my job. And perhaps one in a million reporters (and, by the way, there aren’t a million reporters) has such an incredible, perfect memory that she doesn’t have to take notes. But journalists should take notes. And journalists should use Twitter. Actively.
Maybe a handful of journalists, more than one in a million but less than one in a thousand, excel so well at other digital skills or at traditional skills that it’s immaterial that they haven’t mastered Twitter. But here’s how Twitter is important beyond its everyday usefulness to journalists, even busy editors running huge newsrooms: It’s the best indicator in journalism today of someone who is refusing to embrace change. Using Twitter doesn’t ensure that you’re embracing change and racing into the digital future. But refusing to use Twitter actively is a certain sign that you think change is someone else’s job.
I’ve visited more than 100 newsrooms in the Twitter age, and observed more from afar. The top editor’s embrace of Twitter, moderate use of Twitter or refusal to use Twitter is always reflected to some degree in the staff’s use of Twitter and in the staff’s broader embrace of innovation.
Just last month, the Times embarrassed itself when Alessandra Stanley (one of the Twitter corpses noted in Buzzfeed’s graveyard) wrote an insulting piece about Shonda Rhimes that three editors failed to notice problems with. When criticism (from Rhimes herself and many others) erupted on Twitter, Stanley responded with a flippant remark through a Times spokesperson that insulted her critics’ intelligence with a reference to Twitter’s character limit that expressed a clear view of the social media platform as shallow:
The whole point of the piece — once you read past the first 140 characters — is to praise Shonda Rhimes for pushing back so successfully on a tiresome but insidious stereotype.
But the reaction to Stanley’s insensitivity was not about Twitter and its brevity. Public Editor Margaret Sullivan recounted long, impassioned emails that she received about the hurtful nature of Stanley’s writing (her protest notwithstanding, Stanley defined Rhimes’ success against a tiresome and irrelevant stereotype; the shallowness of Stanley’s own work was best illustrated by Melissa Harris-Perry’s parody, depicting Aaron Sorkin as an angry white man). Baquet gave Sullivan a vague response that indicated he didn’t fully appreciate the emotional reaction to the piece. I’m doubtful that either one of them did more than glance at the #LessClassicallyBeautiful hashtag, which would have helped them understand the offensive nature of a Stanley line that was well beyond the story’s first 140 characters. In addition to helping educate them about the Times’ offense in that case, browsing the hashtag would have helped these Twitter evaders understand the platform’s value for listening to the public and engaging with it. They might have learned the power and depth of communication that comes 140 characters at a time. I can’t imagine either of them responding to the criticism as weakly as they did if they read and truly understood the reaction on the hashtag.
Don’t take my word that Twitter is important to innovation in journalism. Check out the Times innovation report. It mentioned Twitter 18 times. You have to wonder how much the top editors understood those references. Generally, they expect someone else to figure out Twitter. The 11 news-side editors on the Times masthead have more personal accounts with generic egg avatars (at least three; I couldn’t find one editor) than it has editors who have tweeted more than 1,000 times (two). Kristof has tweeted nearly 18,000 times, more than three times as many tweets as the whole masthead combined.
Here are some of the messages an editor who’s trying to lead innovation sends to the staff when he or she doesn’t use Twitter actively:
- You can delegate innovation to someone else.
- You can innovate without changing your routine.
- You can innovate without learning something new.
- You can innovate without dealing with things that annoy you.
- You can innovate from your comfort zone.
And here’s the truth: You can’t.
I welcome a response. I will use the Times website’s clunky contact form to invite response from Baquet, Stanley and Kristof. I have no faith that people read those messages, though. I have an email address for Sullivan and will invite her response as well and ask her to pass my message along to the others. I will invite all of them to respond on Twitter, but I don’t expect Baquet or Stanley to see my tweet, for obvious reasons. If you know either of them and would tell them I welcome their response, I would appreciate your help. I will add any responses I get here. Or if someone sends me a long response that merits a separate guest post, I will link to it from here. As noted above, Baquet has responded.
Thanks to Kristof for this response (not surprising that he responded first):
Thanks to Sullivan for this response:
While I largely agree with your article, I do think it’s important to note that Twitter is substantially less useful in smaller, more rural areas. The population base simply isn’t large enough–and it’s unfortunate, because I really really reeeeeally wanted to use Twitter when I worked for smaller papers.
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Actually, I have prodded some journalists at smaller papers to start using Twitter more actively after they gave me that excuse, and they were pleased with the results. There were more people on Twitter than they realized, and they weren’t reading the paper. Plus, if you livetweet & feed tweets onto the site, it doesn’t matter if no one’s following (but they will). That said, yes, Twitter is more useful in metro areas.
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It’s not an excuse. I tried it for a good long time, and the returns were not there for the rural community of 12,000 people I lived in.
I was pretty disappointed, because I could definitely sense the power of the tool. And I really, really did want it to work.
It’s also possible things have changed in the past 4 years or so. Maybe things have picked up.
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I work at a paper covering a county of 42,000 people, and my beat covers 7 towns, the largest of which is about 3,000. Not a lot of my sources are on Twitter – most of the counties I cover really aren’t – but it’s still been an incredibly helpful tool for connecting with other journalists, finding data I can use for reporting, and keeping up with regional news. And there are a surprising number of Twitter users in my home county (the 42k one) that I don’t actually cover – not just businesses, but average Joes, PIOs and more. I’ve spotted local breaking news on Twitter even though the population is so small.
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I agree that Twitter in itself is not innovation. But Twitter and the engagement with the public is emblematic of the switch from the top-down notion of news many of us have if we were part of news culture in the ’70s, ’80s and even ’90s. It’s not that way anymore. People who are good at what they do keep doing things the same way and wonder why circulation is dropping or revenue is fading. Twitter and the ability to engage with the audience, to listen, is so important.
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I agree with @Kari, a former co-worker, actually. Hi Kari!! Anyway, Twitter certainly helped, sometimes. But so did Facebook. I’ve been out of reporting too long for Instragram, Vine, etc. But why Twitter above all other social media?
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Twitter is more useful in breaking news and live reporting than any other social tool. The other tools are all useful and we should be using them all, but Twitter has the strongest resistance and generates the most disdain, so it’s the best barometer of a journalist’s or newsroom’s resistance to or embrace of innovation. It’s not enough, and it’s by no means the only thing we should be doing, but it’s important enough for nearly every newsroom position that it’s a great indicator.
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Yeah, we got a lot more views out of Facebook than we ever did out of Twitter, by orders of magnitude.
Twitter was still useful, but primarily as a listening tool and not as an engagement/interactive one.
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Kari is right – Twitter seems to be slower to take hold in rural communities and the overall percentage of people who use it does not seem to be high. This is changing, however, and as more rural communities get on board with Twitter, it’s important for news organizations to have an established presence. How cool is it for readers to join the party and discover that we’re already there?
The Twitter strategy for rural news organizations might have to be a little different. We might have to market our Twitter presence and encourage people to join Twitter so they can follow us and our staff, hear right away about breaking news, click on our story links, interact with us, etc. This won’t work, however, if our presence on Twitter is half-hearted to begin with… so buy-in at the top levels and active, consistent use of Twitter are all critical.
Overall, Twitter is just a great way to connect with people and be on top of what’s happening, period. And even at smaller newspapers, I don’t think we can afford to be parochial anymore. Local, yes. But not parochial. It’s truly a global world and rural news organizations have to start thinking outside of their own city or county limits.
P.S. Hi, Kari!
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I guarantee you that even in rural communities, high school athletes are using Twitter (like the pros they aspire to become). So sports reporters in those towns need to use athletes’ usernames in their tweets, so the athletes will see the mentions and RT to followers (many of whom don’t read the paper).
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I work at the Grand Forks Herald now, and we’ve done a lot of work on our Twitter presence even in the past month. We’re watching our metrics more, interacting more with our readers, and just generally participating in conversation more by retweeting, replying and engaging.
We made a Twitter Directory ( http://www.grandforksherald.com/content/twitter-directory ) so that people can find reporters on Twitter, we started tweeting pictures along with links more often, and we’re retweeting our own reporters as well as other reporters in our company.
We’re using #s and @s when appropriate and we’re following lots of community people, as well as businesses, governments and university accounts.
It’s working pretty well, and our readers seem to like it! And this might be an important point to make with the antitwitterers–it’s also FUN, you guys.
You guys, IT IS ACTUALLY FUN.
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Even journalists who tweet tend to use it to broadcast links to their stories. I’m surprised at how few know how use it to listen and report.
Here are a couple of good use cases:
1) Twitter lists. If you’re a small-town sports reporter, create a Twitter list with the accounts of every high-school athlete and coach. With a list, you can listen to only their conversations without the noise of other tweets. As Steve says, even in rural communities, the athletes are tweeting.
2) Use geocoded search to discover what people are talking about. In Ellensburg, Wash., I can use the search term “near:Ellensburg,WA within:5mi” and get every tweet (at least those that have location turned on) within five miles of the center of Ellensburg. The “near” search operator, in effect, drops a map pin on the center of a town. The “within” operator then draws a circle around that map pin.
For even greater precision, you can use latitude and longitude. For example, I called up Google Maps and clicked on my office at Central Washington University. The maps.google.com URL changed to a URL containing the lat and long in decimals. I then used the lat and long to construct the search term “geocode:47.0006308,-120.5401088,.5mi” and found all tweets within half a mile of my precise location.
It’s revealing — and sometimes newsworthy — what you can learn about your community.
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P.S. As proof of concept for location-based search, I offer these two tweets that just showed up in my geocoded stream. I wouldn’t have seen them otherwise, since I don’t follow either user.
1. “I’m the asshole that just about hit a biker with my car”
2. “I beat up women because I think it’s fun” and “Yay domestic violence…” from a local athlete.
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Reblogged this on Bill Bennett and commented:
“Using Twitter doesn’t ensure that you’re embracing change and racing into the digital future. But refusing to use Twitter actively is a certain sign that you think change is someone else’s job.”
Buttry is writing here about journalists and journalism, but the sentiment applies to any other line of work involving communications.
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Steve: I agree with much of what you wrote. One of the biggest obstacles to digital innovation in newsrooms is the inability to change the culture. One of the best ways to change culture is for leaders to show they think it’s important by modeling the behavior. As a side note, since you’ve recently entered academia full time, I think your post applies to educators as well. Hard to teach it if you haven’t tried it. Hard to understand its value. And academic leaders in our field need to model the behavior too, in my view.
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Agree completely. Not that Twitter’s the “magic bullet” tool that can save newsrooms, but it’s certainly a bellwether for a journalist’s ability or desire to keep up with the times.
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I couldn’t agree more. Editors and journalists must be engaged on Twitter; it’s not an option. Especially at the Times! And I take it a step further, beyond the newsroom. Publishers, advertising directors, digital managers & more need to be engaged on Twitter and other social media platforms. I blogged about it in June and that post remains my most popular in terms of views, shares, comments and likes. It really hit a chord.
Access ‘It’s Like Being a Publisher & Never Reading the Paper’ here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140630002232-11309770-it-s-like-being-a-publisher-and-never-reading-the-paper?trk=mp-reader-card
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