Where Should All the Journalists Go? Not to Twitter

The tumultuous social media platform no longer requires reporters to be on it.

Twitter isn't what it used to be, and it's time for journalists to catch on and move on. Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Putting nostalgia aside, it’s time for journalists everywhere to pay a visit to Twitter’s tombstone and say goodbye forever to the iconic blue bird as it flies off into the sunset. The social media platform, once regarded as an important professional tool for half of U.S. reporters, now lives on as a shadow of its former self. 

After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022 and later rebranded it as “X,” the platform gave rise to glitches, hate speech and disinformation. Attacks on news professionals also emerged, from NPR being labeled as “state-affiliated media” to left-leaning journalists’ accounts being suspended. It’s a new reality created entirely by Musk, who spends his days jumping up and down for now president-elect Donald Trump.

While social media will always remain relevant in the 21st century, Twitter can be safely eliminated from the journalist’s toolkit today — as long as journalists themselves make the conscious choice to abandon it when considering how much the risks outweigh the benefits.

“There are a number of cases in which journalists have been held to a higher standard for what they put on Twitter or social media. Whereas people like Trump and Musk have gotten away with saying untruthful things, journalists do not get that leeway, and they’re very much held to a higher standard,” said Kai Falkenberg, a media lawyer and Columbia Law School professor who argued last year that journalists should leave Twitter. “It’s almost like you need to fact-check everything, and you don’t have the same rights as other people do to be more cavalier and loose with your language on Twitter.”

According to a 2016 study, journalists primarily utilize social media to monitor trending — and potentially newsworthy — topics and to publicize their work for increased engagement and clicks. More clicks from consumers equate to a greater number of purchased news subscriptions or viewed digital advertisements, both of which contribute to the commercialization of American journalism. As a result, this system incentivizes individual reporters to use social media for career advancement and promotion purposes.

“That can be a prime way to get people to read your stuff, especially because going to a newspaper stand and reading a newspaper isn’t that popular anymore, and people are more active on social media than ever before,” said Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen, senior researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. “To get people’s attention, that’s where journalists have to be.”

A 2013 national survey found that 40% of U.S. journalists consider social media to be important, and 71.5% of them view social media as having a positive effect on the profession. Today, younger journalists use social media more often than their older peers — and one of those younger journalists is Emma Stuber ‘26, a journalism student at Marist College and vice president of Marist’s Society of Professional Journalists chapter.

“If somebody posts something that’s just breaking, you’re able to contact them immediately and ask them more questions about it or get other people’s opinions on what’s happening,” she said. “I’m especially talking about Instagram. It makes it pretty easy to get sources for articles or to ask permission to use photos.”

It turns out that Twitter may not have even been that useful to begin with. In fact, before NPR left the platform, engagement through Twitter made up 2% of all its total traffic. But, as one journalist interviewed for a 2016 study on Twitter said, “You know it’s bad for you, but it tastes so good.” In truth, the platform leaves little more than a bad taste in your mouth nowadays.

To be sure, there are still plenty of journalists on Twitter who find it worth their time. According to Gotfredsen’s write-up in the Columbia Journalism Review, an analysis of 4,000 U.S. journalists found that less than 10 of them deactivated their accounts on the platform, even after Musk took over. Furthermore, daily tweets from journalists only decreased by 3%. In 2022, 69% of U.S. journalists cited Twitter as the most or second-most important social media site for their jobs, and as of this year, 81% of journalists are still on Twitter. 

Casey Newton, founder of the technology newsletter Platformer, hypothesized that part of the reason is that journalists stick with the established followers they have developed on the platform. But times have changed, and not everybody wants to be on Twitter anymore. “I definitely stay off of Twitter. I honestly think it’s one of the most toxic platforms out of all social media platforms, and it hasn’t gotten any better since it switched over owners,” Stuber said.

As stated by Gotfredsen, the Twitter of today has crossed a threshold, and its particular political stance has convinced many to finally take the leap of faith and leave. “People realize that this situation has actually escalated a little bit. Twitter has become way more partisan, and it’s a very different kind of community on X now than it was three years ago. That’s why people are saying, ‘I have to take action. I have to move,’” she said.

Luckily, today’s journalists have a plethora of options from which to choose from to build their connections beyond Twitter. There’s LinkedIn, which offers a professional community that connects reporters to qualified sources and expert training. There’s Threads, which serves as the text-based sibling to Instagram and Meta’s alternative to Twitter. There’s even Mastodon and Bluesky, both of which emphasize personalized content moderation for a customizable social media experience. Going forward, a sizable majority of outlets plan to become more active on Instagram, which provides an audience of two billion active users monthly. 

“I think we’ve learned as a society that the platforms have guardrails that can inform what the community is like, and I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to settle upon platforms that allow for the promotion of journalistic content that is respectful and worthwhile,” said Falkenberg. In addition, Gotfredsen pointed to video-based social media platforms as an up-and-coming trend in the news industry. “People’s attention span is just so much shorter nowadays,” she said. “If you can make your article into a viral TikTok video, if anything, that’s the most efficient way of getting your stuff out there.”

Of course, all these options can make it easy to pick up a digitized case of analysis paralysis, but freelance journalist Annalee Newitz offers simple advice to combat the paradox of choice. “For finding community and sources, I definitely think it’s best to focus on a couple of platforms where you already know several trusted people,” they said in a social media roundtable for science writing website The Open Notebook.

It’s also good practice to be a thoughtful digital citizen when on social media. For instance, The New York Times’ current guidelines provide a checklist for newsroom staff to follow before posting. Questions for journalists to ask themselves include “Would you express similar views in an article on The Times’ platforms?” and “Could your post hamper your colleagues’ ability to effectively do their jobs?”

But still, when it comes to practicing journalism, staying on social media isn’t the only way to report the news. In 2022, The New York Times recommended that its journalists spend less time tweeting and scrolling and more time focusing on doing their jobs. 

According to Falkenberg, journalists who locate sources on social media exclusively could be missing out. “I think there’s a failure to appreciate that if you are doing your sourcing that way, there’s a world of people that are not on social media that you will not be interacting with, and there’s a void in your reporting,” she said.

So, to all journalists reading this — get on a different social media platform (or two or three) and then get going on your next reporting project. Twitter doesn’t need you anymore, and you don’t need it.