Elon Musk became the new owner and CEO of Twitter openly hostile to “mainstream media” journalists.
He has said he plans to strip journalists of their verification tick badges and ridiculed major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN, and allowed thousands of formerly suspended accounts to re-enter the platform to spew misinformation and hate, sometimes aimed at reporters.
But while many prominent journalists have expressed concerns about Musk’s actions — and some have switched to new social media platforms like Mastodon and Post — few have abandoned Twitter altogether.
Journalists have been among the biggest power users since Twitter was founded. They post a steady stream of reliable information on the platform for free – especially around major events, from national elections to sports games – making Twitter a vibrant place for other people to find and discuss the news of the day. Her relationship with the platform tells us not only how the journalism industry is adapting to Musk’s leadership style, but also whether the billionaire’s Twitter version is making or failing to gain a major constituency.
Well, since Twitter isn’t exactly courting journalists, why aren’t they going?
“I mean, I’m stuck,” said freelance tech reporter Jacob Silverman, whose work has been featured in outlets like the New Republic and Washington Post. “For my swipe at crypto — a lot of these things happen on Twitter. And that’s how people tend to find me.”
Silverman said that like many journalists he knows, his relationship with Twitter is “kind of tortured” and “unbridled.” It’s still appealing to follow the public spectacle that’s unfolding on Twitter right now. Nowadays, it’s often the chaos surrounding Musk himself.
“Twitter is still that place sometimes where you can reach out to powerful people or where powerful people can reach out to the public,” Silverman said. “Especially now that Musk is as addicted to the platform as anyone – in a very pathetic way – attacking him feels slightly cathartic at times.”
Some journalists, like Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, have not left Twitter, but they are posting more on other platforms. Lorenz said she moved away from Twitter years before Musk took office when she noticed more of her audience were moving to Instagram and TikTok.
Even a reduced Twitter presence still makes journalists vulnerable to bullying. Lorenz, who has over 300,000 Twitter followers, has long dealt with hate comments and stalkers on the platform, but said she could contact Twitter’s trust and safety team if past harassment got bad. Now that many members of that team have been terminated or fired, she doesn’t know who to talk to. As part of Lorenz’s job is to cover social media, she stays on the platform.
As journalists face a less welcoming environment under Musk, some have begun quieting the platform: posting less frequently and without as many details about their personal lives, mostly to promote their work.
“It’s like one of those ‘Why I’m leaving New York’ essays,” Lorenz said. “You never want to explain anything in public.”
Despite its flaws, Twitter is still an efficient source for gathering news
One of the main reasons journalists are still on Twitter is that it hasn’t broken yet.
After Musk reduced Twitter’s workforce by more than 75 percent through layoffs and layoffs, many feared the platform would collapse under the pressure of heavy usage during the 2022 US midterm elections and World Cup. That didn’t happen.
Instead, Twitter has gradually become more buggy. Users have reported slowness, notifications not working, and more irrelevant suggested tweets. But for most journalists who are power users, it’s still usable.
“I’m not leaving here until it stops loading,” Ben Collins, who covers disinformation for NBC News, wrote in a Twitter message to Recode. “I cover the information war. This has always been the primary battlefield,” Collins wrote.
For reporters whose job depends on finding news before it happens, Twitter — for all its woes — is still one of the most effective ways to follow breaking events, connect with sources, and find experts quickly.
“I contact a lot of people via DMs, which I think they generally respond to faster than email,” said Laura Hazard Owen, editor of the Nieman Journalism Lab. “And it’s less scary than trying to find her phone number and text messages.”
While Twitter doesn’t have nearly as many users as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, it does have an influential group of politicians, academics, business leaders, and other subject matter experts on the platform that reporters need to talk to on a daily basis.
If the same type of relevant sources existed on another platform, reporters could presumably get there. But that brings us to our next point.
Alternatives are still too niche
Journalists looking for an alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter, and with whom Recode spoke, have largely turned to two new apps – Mastodon and Post – but both have struggled to achieve the same reach as Twitter.
Mastodon is an app with similar features to Twitter but with a DIY ethos that runs on open-source technology. It has become popular with journalists concerned about Musk’s leadership on Twitter and has established a “journa.host” server with around 2,500 active users.
But Mastodon’s biggest limitation is its complexity; Setting up a new server requires some technical know-how. Unlike major social media channels, Mastodon doesn’t have centralized content moderation, so it relies on users to monitor each other – and there’s already been some infighting among journalists over what’s allowed on the journalism server, like the New York Times reports.
You can see how an app like this can be popular with certain masses but struggle to find mainstream adoption on the same scale as larger social media networks. And that’s a problem for writers looking for a broad audience.
Post is another Twitter alternative app launched by Waze co-founder Noam Bardin, which aims to allow journalists to be billed directly from readers for their content. The site has a simple interface and is easy to use. But it’s still in early beta and only available in a web browser. The site is also buggy: after about 10 minutes of use, I encountered an error page after clicking on another journalist’s profile.
It is still too early to measure the success of these two apps among journalists. So far, neither has become a real competitor to Twitter.
Some of Mastodon and Post’s most prominent journalists — like Lorenz, Collins, Kara Swisher, and Mike Masnick — also have active Twitter accounts.
“Journalists don’t exist in a vacuum. They are there to engage with senators, legislators and academics,” Lorenz said. “So I think it’s really difficult to recreate that network effect on a new platform.”
The Twitter exodus could yet come
Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School and staff writer at the New Yorker, is one of the few prominent journalists to have quit Twitter altogether.
Cobb announced his departure first on Twitter and then in an essay arguing that the platform “now subsidizes a billionaire who understands free speech to be synonymous with the right to abuse others.”
After leaving Twitter very publicly, Cobb said he was inundated with hate mail, including people calling him the N-word. He said other writers may choose to exit the platform more discreetly.
“My theory is that people might as well quit,” Cobb said. “I also think I’ve heard people feel like they’re staying here to see what happens.”
At the same time that Musk is reinstating some suspended far-right figures, some left-wing journalists and other public figures are being pushed off the platform. Several anti-fascist organizers and journalists have been suspended since Musk took office, The Intercept reported.
Andrew Lawrence, associate director for rapid response at left-leaning blog Media Matters, has been blocked for “spam”. on Thursday morning, NBC’s Collins noted – shortly after Lawrence tweeted a critical comment on Musk’s Neuralink project and right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson. Hours after Lawrence was suspended, his account was restored.
Collins told Recode he didn’t know why his account was flagged as spam. It’s unclear if his suspension was intentional or a mistake (Musk posted this on Twitter the night before Bulk purge of bots from the platformwhich may have led to some false positives), but if journalists find they are being wrongly suspended, it could create even more uncertainty and a reason to leave.
Twitter has not responded to a request for comment. Under Musk, the company eliminated its communications department — another challenge for reporters trying to verify news about the platform.
Just because journalists aren’t leaving Twitter en masse doesn’t mean it won’t be happening gradually, especially as the platform continues to become a less welcoming place for media types.
Twitter is a platform that, at its core, has always been about news. Journalists add value to the platform by tweeting reliable new information in real time, often before an article is even published. If journalists begin to siphon off the platform or withhold their juiciest news, Musk could suffer another setback in his already daunting challenge of making Twitter a financially viable business.
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