Newsrooms Ponder Whether To Pay For Twitter Blue Checks

There is a wide range of considerations to explain why a point of sale might want to keep the verified status for its journalists. A leader in the editorial room in an entertainment media who was not authorized to talk about his policy told Buzzfeed News that the publication will probably end up paying for verification. Although this outlet is more at risk for the type of disinformation that could start the Second World War, it has a continuous problem with the crooks trying to move away from the money of musical artists by pretending to write for the publication and asking them to pay (false) coverage.

Geoffrey Ingersoll, editor -in -chief of the Daily Caller, told Buzzfeed News that his organization would probably make the business version, even if he personally had the intention to keep his verification. “I had planned to leave mine to mine because I have no interest in being a famous Nerd among journalists on Twitter,” he said. “Since the verification has become a payment, it has lost its usefulness for me – in particular the search for tweets of people verified only to have an idea of ​​where the media take a story.”

The caller daily has not decided which people in the editorial hall will remain checked as part of the five account package, and the point of sale plans to revise the analysis in a few months to see if payment is worth it.

Insider does not intend to pay the checks of his journalists either. “The value of a blue check was that he said that the person was what he said they were,” the editor Nicholas Carlson told Buzzfeed News. “Now, a blue assessment simply says that they are a Blue Twitter subscriber. This does not help Twitter users or our readers.”

Likewise, Politico will not pay the checks of staff members. “In the future, a checkout will no longer mean that you are a checked journalist. Instead, that will simply mean that you pay for advantages such as longer tweets and fewer ads,” wrote Anita Kumar, principal editor of Politico standards and ethics, in a message in the shared editorial hall with Buzzfeed News. “Politico will not pay for you to abound in Twitter Blue. You can of course register at your expense.”

For independent and independent journalists, it can be worth it. “I definitely pay for Twitter Blue. In fact, I registered this week,” said Alex Kantrowitz, a former Buzzfeed News staff who writes the substack newsletter Great technology. “I don’t care about the blue decrease, which could be a responsibility at this stage. But obtaining an additional distribution in the For You tab is worth it for me at $ 8 / month, since distribution is the cornerstone of small media brands like Big Technology.”

Beyond obtaining a blue verification, Twitter Blue includes features such as the possibility of seeing the most shared articles of the people you follow on Twitter, that many journalists find useful. Twitter also works on a way to allow blue subscribers to hide their checks, which could make the costs modest more attractive for someone who just wants functionalities but thinks that the check seems to cringe.

Buzzfeed Inc. (which includes the various accounts for BuzzFeed, Buzzfeed News, Tasty, Huffpost and Complex) does not plan to pay or allow employees to spend blue checks. “As a business, we do not think that it is a wise use of resources to pay for individuals to keep a blue check that is not different from that of others – an amateur medical expert, Elon Stan or other – who is simply willing to pay the costs for a blue check,” said the editor of Buzzfeed News in chief Karolina Waclawia.

Ellie Hall and Tom Warren contributed to report to this story.