…include (h/t, LAObserved’s Kevin Roderick):

Base all comments posted in your role as a Dow Jones employee in the facts, drawing from and citing your reporting when appropriate. Sharing your personal opinions, as well as expressing partisan political views, whether on Dow Jones sites or on the larger Web, could open us to criticism that we have biases and could make a reporter ineligible to cover topics in the future for Dow Jones.


Consult your editor before “connecting” to or “friending” any reporting contacts who may need to be treated as confidential sources. Openly “friending” sources is akin to publicly publishing your Rolodex.

Don’t engage in any impolite dialogue with those who may challenge your work….

Let our coverage speak for itself, and don’t detail how an article was reported, written or edited.

Business and pleasure should not be mixed on services like Twitter. Common sense should prevail, but if you are in doubt about the appropriateness of a Tweet or posting, discuss it with your editor before sending.

So, Twittering about your adorable children is, it seems, out. Ditto opinions. And rudeness. So basically, everything that (all that?) other Twittering reporters do, WSJ folks can not. (Oh, except for promoting/linking to their own stories — as long as they don’t get into how the pieces were “reported, written or edited.”)

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.