How a WSJ reporter used LinkedIn to connect with the Facebook whistleblower

Brian Stelter of CNN Business writes about how Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz used LinkedIn to earn the trust of a Facebook whistleblower.

Stelter writes, “Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz first connected with Frances Haugen, now known as the Facebook whistleblower, late last year. He was trying to meet more sources at Facebook to learn about how the company managed content on its platforms around the 2020 election.

“He tried ‘the old LinkedIn spamming approach to source building,’ he called it in an interview on this week’s “Reliable Sources” podcast.

“That’s when reporters use the professional social network to message dozens of employees in the hopes of hearing back from one or two. I ‘did not hear back from anyone for a month,’ Horwitz said.

“But then, in December 2020, Facebook dissolved its civic integrity team, which had been charged with thorny issues about election interference and overall safety around the election.

“The day that I first heard from Frances was the day that the civic team got disbanded,” Horwitz said.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.