Choire Sicha writes:

Today, New York Times honcho Dean Baquet ordered a company-wide “reset” in how his staff should think about Twitter. Mostly, he’d like them to never look at it again.

You can see why. Most of the people who work for him are very bad at being on Twitter, and their tweets truly are just not good. And then their bosses are so obsessed with Twitter too, and on edge about it. A cycle of humiliation ensues. They spend all that money on editors and then people just write stuff willy-nilly online? Whatever for?!

Twitter looms prominently for journalists because it’s how they get jobs, distribute their work, and make friends. Twitter also helps journalists feel and be seen inside a system that will otherwise make them feel invisible. (No, I’m not asking you to feel bad for them, I promise.) Reporters in general are anxious, and the structure of their workplace feeds that. At the Times in particular they are often starved for information and kept in eternal suspense about their status in the organization. (An extremely successful reporter, when I worked there, once asked me if she was in the “rubber room,” referring to the detention places New York City used to send its bad teachers. She was! She had offended a senior leader and was being iced out, but no one would tell her.) [Continue reading…]