Taylor Lorenz Eviscerates the NY Times’ New ‘Regressive’ Twitter Policy: ‘Policing Employee Speech & Expression’

Photo by Sara Kenigsberg. Via Washington Post.

A memo addressing social media activity sent to New York Times staff by Executive Editor Dean Baquet on Thursday raised eyebrows across the media world and was roundly trashed by former Times tech reporter Taylor Lorenz.

“If you do choose to stay on, we encourage you to meaningfully reduce how much time you’re spending on the platform, tweeting or scrolling, in relation to other parts of your job,” Baquet wrote, while adding “Masthead editors, department heads and our Standards department will pay close attention to how all Times journalists use social media to ensure it is in line with our social media guidelines.”

Lorenz quickly weighed in on the memo, which was widely shared on social media. She began a long thread by saying, “The NYT announced a new policy on Twitter today and it’s very disappointing and contradictory to see. This is not how a newsroom should approach the internet or social media. It only deepens the NYT’s vulnerability to bad faith attacks. Let me break it down.”

For the majority of my career I ran social strategy for newsrooms. I wrote social media guidelines for large media cos. A good social policy is about *supporting* your staff, protecting them against bad faith attacks, and recognizing that we all live as full humans online now

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) April 7, 2022

Lorenz recently left the Times to work for the Washington Post and has made headlines for coming under attack from right-wing figures like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. While Lorenz argues she has been the victim of “bad faith” smear campaigns, critics claim she has used her journalism and large online following to unfairly malign some of the influencers she covers.

“For the majority of my career I ran social strategy for newsrooms. I wrote social media guidelines for large media cos,” Lorenz continued in the thread. “A good social policy is about *supporting* your staff, protecting them against bad faith attacks, and recognizing that we all live as full humans online now.”

She then highlighted three paragraphs in the memo, “These two things are in direct contradiction w/ each other. The issue w/ NYT is that they consistently buy into bad faith attacks online and punish their journalists when they’re subject to gamergate style smear campaigns.”

Lorenz shared a screenshot of these paragraphs from Baquet’s memo, while criticizing the Times’ alleged lack of action:

Second, we’re announcing a major new initiative to support journalists who experience online threats or harassment. We take these attacks extremely seriously, and we know just how much this abuse affects our colleagues’ well-being, sense of safety and ability to do their jobs. We have a dedicated team to support Times journalists, and we’re rolling out new training and tools to help prevent and respond to online abuse. This is an industry-wide scourge, but we are determined to take action. We’ll be providing more details today.

Third, I want to emphasize that your work on social media needs to reflect the values of The Times and be consistent with our editorial standards, social media guidelines and behavioral norms. In particular, tweets or subtweets that attack, criticize or undermine the work of your colleagues are not allowed. Doing so undercuts the reputation of The Times as well as our efforts to foster a culture of inclusion and trust.

“The masthead editors are more obsessed w/ twitter than the majority of the newsroom, stalking down employees every reply. Saying they’re going to police that even *more* is counterproductive, damaging to journalists, especially those who need to use the internet for reporting,” she argued.

The masthead editors are more obsessed w/ twitter than the majority of the newsroom, stalking down employees every reply. Saying they’re going to police that even *more* is counterproductive, damaging to journalists, especially those who need to use the internet for reporting

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) April 7, 2022

Lorenz offered some suggestions for how newsrooms can better navigate the complicated relationship journalists have with Twitter and their work. “Newsroom social media policies need to recognize that social media isn’t just some place u log on to promote ur stories, it is where we live, socialize, date, connect, vent, cope, & more,” she writes.

“Policies like this are regressive and not consistent w/ how younger ppl use the internet,” she concluded.

“When ur obsessively focused on policing employee speech & expression 24/7 that makes it harder for ppl to do their jobs, it makes staff more vulnerable to bad faith attacks,” she argued, doubling down on her earlier criticisms.

She finished by noting that newsroom leaders seem to be stuck in the past, and by only now offering a policy for Twitter shows just how behind the times some organizations are. “Wait until they learn about TikTok, or Twitch, or any myriad of other platforms,” she jested.

Newsroom leaders also need to recognize that social media is more than twitter and try to understand how entangled the internet is w/ young ppl’s lives. They really do not seem to understand this. Wait until they learn about TikTok, or Twitch, or any myriad of other platforms

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) April 7, 2022