OLD Media Moves

NYT’s tech columnist Manjoo tones down his Tweets.

May 7, 2014

Posted by Chris Roush

Matt Buchanan of The Awl interviewed New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo about his life, his new job, and a bunch of other stuff.

Here is an excerpt:

So would you say there has to be a shift in the way you tweet then, toward a more authentic version of you? (The outside world seems to have decided there has been a shift.) Like Josh [Topolsky, of The Verge] tweeting, “Farhad.” Do you expect that kind of reaction now? Or know the tweets that get them?

I sometimes know which tweets will arouse Sam. But mostly I don’t think I can predict which ones will get the “Farhad” reaction… There has been a change in how I tweet over the last year, I think. But that’s mostly because of my job changes. When I was at Slate I was freer to say anything I wanted. I wouldn’t worry about, say, tweeting something that might reveal my politics. (See my tweets from the 2008 or 2012 election.) But after I started working at the WSJ and then the NYT, I got more careful about that. In part because I was told to tone that stuff down, but also because people react more strong to Fancy Newspaper Columnist says Pro-Obama Thing compared to just some guy at a Website. But that’s been the only conscious change I’ve made to my feed in the last year or so.

Read more here.

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