Pass the #popcorn [Updated]

ICYMI: Reuters social media editors spar

According to a recent Pew study, 16 percent of adults online use Twitter — 8 percent daily. 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.

[Update, April 22, 1:56pm]
From Reuters spokesperson Barb Burg: Keys “is no longer with the company, effective today.”

[Update, April 22, 1:17pm]


[Original post, April 17, 3:15pm]

It’s been just over a month since Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys was indicted by the Justice Department. Since then, he’s amassed a legal team and, it appears, is spending most of his suspension-with-pay time away from Reuters doing what he did while he was at Reuters: tweeting the news. His boss, Anthony De Rosa, hasn’t said anything publicly about Keys (nor did he respond to an earlier request for comment).

And then …

DECISION: Does @TheMatthewKeys have a case against @antderosa that his tweets were, in fact, “stolen?” I have no idea. The wording is similar, but they’re both pulling from the same statements and they both only have 140 characters to do it in. Keys’s evidence against his boss is far from unequivocal here. But I think we can all agree that calling out your boss like that is a terrible, terrible idea. According to the Justice Department, Keys has made a lot of those.

De Rosa, on the other hand, has been wisely silent about all of this. Easy win for him.

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Sara Morrison is a former assistant editor at CJR. Follow her on Twitter @saramorrison. Tags: , ,