The Busch Light guy and the Des Moines Register

Good strategy. Others should follow.

I totally agree. Tweets have become ticking time bombs, permanent records that could benefit or end your career within 280 characters.

Let's not forget the shitstorm Mike Rosenberg, of The Seattle Times, brought onto himself when he decided to be a creep in what he thought was a private channel, only for the woman he harassed to embarrass him on the platform and make him a laughingstock.

I'm curious to know where Mike is, speaking of him.

 

I avoided any major issues at Turner because of sheer, dumb luck. After the 2009 NASCAR season, some executive went to a social media symposium or something, and felt we could "own and build our own brand" with this whole social media thing. So we were required to create personal Facebook and Twitter accounts. However, nobody ever told us what to do with them or to put anything in there that explained our relationship to NASCAR.

AND even better, none of our bylines linked to them and we had no "all-purpose" account to populate, because NASCAR wanted to keep the NASCAR.com Twitter page for their PR releases. So for the most part, the general public happened upon us mostly by accident, or if NASCAR/another media outlet happened to link to us.

Unlike Jeff Gluck or Bob Pockrass, we pretty much flew under the radar until we went belly-up at the end of 2012. I think I came close to 1,000 followers at the pinnacle. So my Twitter account now is basically something for me to pontificate on anything. I'm mostly "that guy" who writes other writers to point out inaccuracies or to laud certain pieces I like, and bitch about Al Avila.

By the time I was rehired by PGA.com and NCAA.com in 2014, Turner had gone off the deep end with a fully-fledged social media department that handled nearly all of the heavy lifting -- which is why editorial avoided the poopstorm when some social nit-twit ignored the posted embargo time and thought tweeting the NCAA men's basketball pairings BEFORE CBS a few years back was a good idea. (Hire stupid people at your own risk.)

Like my thoughts on taking chances with your life, your career is the corollary. You can post all the hot takes you like, but you only need one misstep to ruin your career.

 

There's another way to look at it, too: Don't be an asshole, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or in real life, and odds are you won't have much to worry about.

 

This is the part that gets me. The whole "140 character resignation letter": yeah, if you're an asshole.

I've been on Twitter for 10 years. I have about 3,000 tweets. I'm verified and have a decent number of followers.

There isn't a single tweet on my feed that I wouldn't print out and hand to my boss. A few months ago I went back through the whole feed to clean it up; there wasn't a single tweet that needed scrubbing.

Seriously, it's not that hard. If you can't handle having a twitter account you're probably in the wrong business.

In this case, I don't think the story subject's tweets really belonged in the story. I'm also not terribly sympathetic that his past racist bullshit came up to embarrass him.

But the reporter? Jesus, what an idiot. They should rehire him just so they can fire him again.

 

Handle a Twitter account as in keeping your emotions in check and not be an asshole on the platform?

 

Yes.

 

Having stepped in it a bit recently, sometimes that can be easier said than done. I got sucked into a vortex of stupidity just by trying to point out someone's misunderstanding. I wasn't a total asshole, maybe wound up getting too snarky for my own good, but still had a moment of weakness that led to a few days of misery.
Another Czabanism: Twitter and social media is like a rock fight. You're constantly ducking and dodging them whenever you're on there. But no matter how careful you are, eventually one of them is going to hit you right between the eyes and cause you to lose your cool.

 

I get that the immediacy of Twitter/social media can be the most dangerous part of it, and it's easy to be sucked into a playground battle of "fuck you," "no, fuck you!" exchanges.

But in the big picture, is it much different than taking a shitty phone call from someone who wants you fired for something you did that wasn't really wrong at all, or who approaches you at a game, or shits on you on a forum or message board somewhere? It's all a rock fight, and has been from years on dozens of different platforms. It's how you handle it that dictates what the result is, not the platform itself.

Shit, I've stepped on my own dick answering complaint phone calls a couple of dozen times in my career. Probably should have been reprimanded or suspended a few times. That was all my fault with the way I reacted, not the fault that we had phones in the office.

 

It seems to me Twitter is just a forum for a writer to brag he/she got some meaningless story first or a forum to lavish praise on somebody at your organization for writing a boring 170 inch story on a football player dedicating a win to his grandmother who raised him. The suit that decided Twitter is vital/important is yet another incompetent person. There's absolutely no reason to report news on Twitter. Twitter users aren't stupid. They know what news organizations are covering their teams. Allegedly every page view counts and Twitter may bring a dozen or so extra page views. Congratulations on that, suits. You've made Twitter a lot of money adopting their site as the "breaking news site."

 

What, in your opinion, is the best way to handle these situations, on and off Twitter. Ignoring the problem often doesn't work, more like throwing a tank of gasoline on a match.

Truly. Twitter was a mistake.

 

Twitter is a technology, a tool, a delivery system.

If you're a jackass on Twitter, you have a jackass problem, not a Twitter problem.