The New York Times’ coverage of Trump’s visit shows Twitter can still be great
This post was first published on Interhacktives on Wednesday 23 November.
Donald Trump visited the New York Times at its Manhattan office on Tuesday. The on-the-record meeting was highly anticipated and publicised after the president-elect cancelled the meeting via Twitter — but, allegedly, not in person — earlier that day.
The Times live-reported the meeting and disseminated the coverage on various channels. Its app sent out a push alert at the beginning of the meeting, and maintained a live blog on its website and posted on Facebook twice during the event. (At time of writing — 15:15 ET, or one hour after the meeting ended — the Times has also published at least one story reflecting on the president-elect’s visit.)
But out of all the ways the Times covered the event, Twitter was by far the most effective.
The Times’ social media strategy editor, Michael Gold, created a public Twitter list of the journalists who had attended so people could follow — and instantly react to — direct quotes from the president-elect.
The newspaper also curated a story on Twitter moments, but this only featured some of the tweets on the live feed. (Twitter Moments does not allow users to add text in between tweet embeds, so the publication was unable to add commentary or context as it did in its live blog.)
It is important to note, however, that relying only on Twitter for live coverage of the story — or any story — is insufficient. The Times’ journalists mostly tweeted direct quotes from Trump, some of which — such as his suggestion that Stephen Bannon, his chief strategist and former editor of Breitbart News, was neither racist nor alt-right — seemed factually dubious and would be best accompanied with fact checking after the event.
Investor confidence in Twitter has recently fallen dramatically with its struggle to monetise its user base, shuttering of short-form video network Vine and companies previously interested in buying the social network — including Salesforce, Google and Disney — pulling out one by one. But at moments like these, it’s clear that Twitter has a unique power to create narratives and engage users in a way that other media simply cannot do.
