According to a recent
Pew study, 15 percent of adults online use Twitter — 8 percent daily. I’ve yet to see a study confirming this, but I’m pretty sure most of that 8 percent are journalists. Journalists love Twitter, whether using it for writing, conversation, or fighting.
And I love to watch—and judge—the sparring.
If you see a #JournoTweetFight that you think merits inclusion, please give me a heads up @saramorrison.
I was worried that journalists would behave themselves on Twitter after the fall-out from the Andrew Goldman debacle (one month’s suspension from New York Times Magazine for the freelance columnist). Fortunately, I had nothing to fear, as today’s Twitter bickerings show:
DECISION: No surprise here that @felixsalmon lost this round; he already admitted as much. @weareyourfek doesn’t do much better — he probably should have just stayed out of it entirely rather than try to fan the flame. The winner, of course, is @sullduggery, who bookends this piece, has a new job, and, as of this writing, amassed 355 followers. He should be well on his way to Salmon’s ideal number of followers for an Atlantic Wire deputy editor. As for The Atlantic Wire’s ideal number of Twitter followers for a new hire, its editor Gabriel Snyder tells me:
I’m not mad at Felix for judging a new hire by his Twitter count. But Felix
didn’t get his facts straight. Among Matt’s skills which impressed me was that,
in addition to his editing responsibilities at Esquire.com, he personally runs their
main @EsquireMag Twitter account which is about to cross 137,000
followers. So, while we don’t have a minimum Twitter follower count for new
hires, social media savvy is pretty much a requirement on the Wire.
