A letter posted on a bulletin board in the Miami Herald newsroom, signed by 23 staffers, questioned (among other things) the newspaper’s practice of quoting tweets, especially without attributing them to the authors’ real names. It reads:
On Sunday, we devoted the week’s most desirable newspaper real estate to a series of tweets from our readers about 9/11. We know almost nothing about these people. The names could be real, but maybe not. It doesn’t really matter in Twitter world. So, in a story that begins on the top of our front page, we have ‘geomens’ and ‘Karl B Gordon Geck’ and ‘Neko-do’ and ‘Miami Herald user’ and ‘Afro-Cheez’ offering such trenchant and profound observations as: ‘I was sleeping,’ and ‘In my car…Coming home from the gym,’ and ‘Standing at my kitchen sink.’ </blockquote
Is there any reason why our dwindling pool of readers would care about any of this? Judging from recent letters to the editor, we think not.”
AdvertisementThe letter called it “the newspaper equivalent of open mic night,” which I don’t think is a bad thing, especially since the tweets (and Facebook comments with real names) were in response to the paper asking people to post their memories via social media — a great way to engage users. (See what we wrote earlier about the Washington Post and 9/11).
But it does highlight an interesting issue of how to attribute content that’s posted on social media without people’s real names. Twitter says “tweets are the new quotes,” but many newsrooms don’t allow quoting someone with a fake name, or handle. But such identification has become the norm for many on Twitter and in comments. So do you reserve it for harmless observations? Avoid it altogether if you’re unable to contact people directly for a name? Clearly the last isn’t a sustainable option, given the increasing flood of newsworthy content on Twitter, so what’s a good policy here?