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Most of the journalists I've seen have expressed just the oppossite, an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted, what makes you say that " A lot of journ

Most of the journalists I've seen have expressed just the oppossite, an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted, what makes you say that " A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems wrapped up in their twitter audience frankly."

fullshark 4y ago
Ehh this is all so vague, both Yglesias's original thread and my disagreement with it, and I"m not sure it's benefited from getting specific. Who cares if I find some random tweets supporting my point, I'm sure you can find counter tweets. This ironically is the problem with a lot of modern journalism in a nutshell, tweet hunting to support narratives. In any case my opinion is that a lot of journalists (at least the active ones, not the ones with auto-tweets of their stories) really enjoy twitter and really enjoy being "a blue checkmark" and are annoyed that their club is no longer exclusive. This annoyance has been verbalized in a myriad of criticisms of musk, the new system, etc. Edit: because I can’t completely punt I did remember seeing this tweet which amazingly has 85k likes https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1587508595553353729 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1587508595553353729 Which blew my mind, oh course not completely representative of all journalists
- mcphage 4y ago
  So you read that tweet, but you think it is support of blue checks? Like, you think that tweet indicates the author thinks blue tweets are important and valuable?
  - fullshark 4y ago
    Like most status games, it's deeply uncool to seem like you care about them when you are completely obsessed with them.
livueta 4y ago
> an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted I'll believe that one when I see it; feels very much like celebs announcing they're moving to Canada. More broadly, I think the original tweet thread picks up on something interesting: that blue-check group is bifurcated into actual-clout-havers, e.g. Steven King, who really could/would walk away, and epsilon-from-irrelevant journos who have it as a facet of their employment, who really couldn't. There's a small overlap of journos-with-actual-clout, but they're the exception. Low-clout journos are riding on the cachet generated by the other group, and benefit more from Twitter than they contribute. This is obviously anecdotal so I can't cite or anything, but in conversations with non-tech people IRL I tend to notice a stack of assumptions: Steven King == blue check == important =?= rando journalist =?= also important? If you're a reporter in Columbus, OH or whatever, the effectiveness of that platform, handed to you by the Twitter gods, vastly outstrips your "actual" impact. Steven King doesn't care. Journalist who wants to believe they're a member of the same club as Steven King definitely cares.
- freejazz 4y ago
  "Steven King doesn't care. Journalist who wants to believe they're a member of the same club as Steven King definitely cares." Really? You think journalists want to be in the same club as Stephen King? Because they both happen to write?
ars 4y ago
> an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted I'll believe that when journalists stop writing articles with unnamed sources, that are based on random twitter posts.
- mcphage 4y ago
  They could always fall back to “people are saying…”

fullshark 4y ago

Ehh this is all so vague, both Yglesias's original thread and my disagreement with it, and I"m not sure it's benefited from getting specific. Who cares if I find some random tweets supporting my point, I'm sure you can find counter tweets. This ironically is the problem with a lot of modern journalism in a nutshell, tweet hunting to support narratives. In any case my opinion is that a lot of journalists (at least the active ones, not the ones with auto-tweets of their stories) really enjoy twitter and really enjoy being "a blue checkmark" and are annoyed that their club is no longer exclusive. This annoyance has been verbalized in a myriad of criticisms of musk, the new system, etc. Edit: because I can’t completely punt I did remember seeing this tweet which amazingly has 85k likes https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1587508595553353729 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1587508595553353729 Which blew my mind, oh course not completely representative of all journalists

mcphage 4y ago
So you read that tweet, but you think it is support of blue checks? Like, you think that tweet indicates the author thinks blue tweets are important and valuable?
- fullshark 4y ago
  Like most status games, it's deeply uncool to seem like you care about them when you are completely obsessed with them.

livueta 4y ago

> an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted I'll believe that one when I see it; feels very much like celebs announcing they're moving to Canada. More broadly, I think the original tweet thread picks up on something interesting: that blue-check group is bifurcated into actual-clout-havers, e.g. Steven King, who really could/would walk away, and epsilon-from-irrelevant journos who have it as a facet of their employment, who really couldn't. There's a small overlap of journos-with-actual-clout, but they're the exception. Low-clout journos are riding on the cachet generated by the other group, and benefit more from Twitter than they contribute. This is obviously anecdotal so I can't cite or anything, but in conversations with non-tech people IRL I tend to notice a stack of assumptions: Steven King == blue check == important =?= rando journalist =?= also important? If you're a reporter in Columbus, OH or whatever, the effectiveness of that platform, handed to you by the Twitter gods, vastly outstrips your "actual" impact. Steven King doesn't care. Journalist who wants to believe they're a member of the same club as Steven King definitely cares.

freejazz 4y ago
"Steven King doesn't care. Journalist who wants to believe they're a member of the same club as Steven King definitely cares." Really? You think journalists want to be in the same club as Stephen King? Because they both happen to write?

ars 4y ago

> an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted I'll believe that when journalists stop writing articles with unnamed sources, that are based on random twitter posts.

mcphage 4y ago
They could always fall back to “people are saying…”