Michelle Fields' New Title: Robotic Retweeter

When reporters tweet links to news stories, they often include a specific line or write a snappy description of what they found interesting. Doing so alerts followers that the reporter actually read the story and gleaned something. For example, Business Insider's Joseph Weisenthal recently tweeted a link to a column about trouble with the Federal Reserve. Weisenthal pulled the colorful (if nauseous) line "The Fed is in a hole—a Jackson Hole," which appears halfway through the column and tweeted it with the link. Likewise, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait tweeted a link to a post by WaPo's Ezra Klein. "Agree with Klein that Paul Ryan is right: Obama cut Medicare to fund Obamacare," Chait wrote. BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski tweeted a link to a "Call Me Maybe" cover by Sen. Orrin Hatch. "It's as awkward as it sounds," Kaczynski wrote. See how this works? Michelle Fields, who recently parted ways with The Daily Caller, operates differently. As of late, she's been copying and pasting headlines she presumably finds interesting and tweeting them with their respective links. Did she even read the stories? Last week Politico published a story headlined "Sarah Palin: 'Fox canceled my interviews.'" Fields tweeted, "Sarah Palin: 'Fox canceled my interviews.'" Also on Politico as a story with the headline "Reporters: We loathe 2012 campaign." Fields tweeted, "Reporters: We loathe 2012 campaign." You getting the idea? Soon she moved onto Drudge. This week the Drudge Report linked to a story in the Washington Examiner: "Reporters scolded by Democratic garbage police." Fields tweeted -- guess what? -- the headline. Fields followed her robotic copy-and-paste pattern for stories at Mediaite, InfoWars (another featured on Drudge) and even The Daily Caller. We reached out to Fields for comment to find out if she's doing this drudgery manually or if she's installed an app to her computer that automatically sends out story headlines. So far she's not talking. On the other hand, Fields does have a funny photo collection of chairs from "National Empty Chair Day" on her blog. Following Clint Eastwood's empty-chair monologue mocking President Obama at the RNC, the idea of an empty-chair day went viral. At the bottom of Fields' post, she credits a Twitter user. There appears to be no method to her madness. This time? No link.

Fishbowl

Michelle Fields' New Title: Robotic Retweeter

Eddie Scarry

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Eddie Scarry