The NYT, LAT, and WaPo won't buy Twitter Blue; NYT, LAT, BuzzFeed, and Politico won't reimburse reporters for Blue, but Semafor and other small outlets plan to
'If You Know Me I Ain't Paying' Jess Weatherbed / The Verge : News outlets respond to Twitter Blue coercion with a resounding 'meh.'Twitter is removing blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts tomorrow … Jai Pratap / CoinGape : News Organizations Are Refusing To Pay For Twitter Blue John Callaham / Neowin : Major media outlets won't be paying for their employees to get Twitter Blue badges Oliver Darcy / CNN : News organizations reject Elon Musk's demand of paying to keep checkmarks on Twitter Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology : The Homogenization of Social Media Is Going To Have Some Real Consequences New York Times : Document: Twitter plans to exempt its top 500 advertisers and 10K most-followed, previously verified organizations from paying $1,000 per month for a checkmark The Information : FTC Chair Refused Musk Request for a Meeting Tweets: Oliver Darcy / @oliverdarcy : The Los Angeles Times also says it will not pay for Twitter Blue, noting “verification no longer establishes authority or credibility.” Here's an internal note from managing editor Sara Yasin that went out to staff. https://twitter.com/... Dan Primack / @danprimack : Have seen some suggestions that @elonmusk won't really kill the legacy blue checks, both because it's a bad biz idea and because he picked April 1. BUT: He kind of has to do it. Otherwise, those who paid for Blue because of the warning could claim fraud. Joshua Benton / @jbenton : Wouldn't this mean that all these big publishers will just get the gold check for free? https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Howard Tayler / @howardtayler : Quote-tweeting to turn up the volmue. There is no internal-to-Twitter verification method. The ONLY way to verify that a given Twitter account is yours is to link to it from something that CAN be verified as yours. https://twitter.com/... John Scalzi / @scalzi : The Twitter blue check no longer verifies identity, it just confirms you're spending money, so from a journalistic point of view it makes no sense to pay. Have the outlet post a list on its site of its reporter's accounts and have the accounts link to it. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Katie Mack / @astrokatie : “verification no longer establishes authority or credibility, instead it will only mean that someone has paid for a Twitter Blue subscription” -LA Times Managing Editor, on why they won't bother purchasing a blue check https://twitter.com/... Abhijit Dey / @babumoshaaye : Once publications lose verification and fake, verified accounts start popping replacing our timelines, the media outlets will be forced to leave Twitter as a platform. https://twitter.com/... @nash076 : The NYT, the LA Times, Vox, Politico, WaPo, Buzzfeed ... the list goes on and on, but it looks as if no reputable media outlet will be paying the $1000 a month for Twitter “verification.” https://twitter.com/... Blake Herzinger / @bdherzinger : I am told this is what business acumen looks like - trying to charge people to produce the content and data your model requires, then having everyone but neckbeards refuse to pay you. Incredible stuff. https://twitter.com/... Jesse Spector / @jessespector : I was once told that my articles did exceptionally well on Twitter, and that meant maybe 10% of my traffic was from here. It's a useless cesspool and I will miss it dearly. https://twitter.com/... David Bisset / @dimensionmedia : I'm not a “Mastodon can fix everything wrong with Twitter” person but one could in theory have a server just for journals and reporters (not public) and they can be verified via that source. But won't get them showing up on Twitter over the organizations / frauds that DO pay. https://twitter.com/... Steven Monacelli / @stevanzetti : Twitter may not generate a ton of traffic but it sure does allow me to bully politicians in public so who is to say what the trade off really is https://twitter.com/... Grace Robertson / @graceonfootball : Can't believe Elon Musk's plan of constantly shitting on potential customers has downsides. https://twitter.com/... Oliver Darcy / @oliverdarcy : BuzzFeed a no on paying for staff's blue checks: “As an organization, we will not cover fees for individuals to keep their blue checkmarks moving forward. There are several reasons for this, but one outweighs them all: a blue checkmark no longer means the handle is ‘verified.’” Roslyn / @roslyntalusan : for those of you who feel pressured into buying twitter blue for business purposes*, please bear in mind that corporations are resisting this site owner's extortion scheme. *paying ~$8 to the man screwing your business over is not a good business decision. https://twitter.com/... Sonny Bunch / @sonnybunch : Elon: “Well, the journos will keep their checks because their bosses will pay for it.” Bosses: “lol no” https://twitter.com/... Lauren / @notabigjerk : twitter drives an enormous amount of discourse that mostly just stays on twitter. there's absolutely no financial justification for paying the amount twitter wants for institutional verification so i suspect they won't be the only ones who play wait and see https://twitter.com/... Mark Elliott / @markmobility : It's all going south for Elon. NYT not paying for a blue checkmark for itself or its reporters. Same for LA Times, Buzzfeed and Politico. “verification no longer establishes authority or credibility.” All it establishes is you're paying Elon $8/month. https://twitter.com/... @therealhoarse : People on Twitter don't click out of the platform. I learned that firsthand when promoting music over COVID. A video posted here would get 50,000. That same video posted as a link to YouTube would get 150 clicks. https://twitter.com/... Adrian / @crawf34 : I mean it's not like someone with a fake opinion page account could tweet anything more absurd than the current one does https://twitter.com/... Allison Carter / @allisonlcarter : What many people — including the owner of this website — don't understand. Twitter is good for branding for news sites but a drop in the bucket for traffic and revenue. https://twitter.com/... Dell Cameron / @dellcam : Twitter does not generate traffic. I've been in countless meetings at multiple outlets where this fact has been repeated to me over and over. https://twitter.com/... David M. Perry / @lollardfish : The thing is: if Twitter was a useful site gain paying subscribers, there might be an argument for everyone from the New York Times to me and my 475 person Patreon or to pay for verification. But it's not. It was pre Elon, but he broke it. https://twitter.com/... Scott Nover / @scottnover : Twitter needs the New York Times WAY more than the New York Times needs Twitter. And it's not particularly close. https://twitter.com/... Benjy Sarlin / @benjysarlin : Would be tens of thousands per month for “real” branded verification ($1k per brand, $50 per affiliated account). If brands don't pay, this whole model falls apart pretty quickly revenue-wise. https://twitter.com/... Norm Charlatan / @normcharlatan : Assuming this policy sticks (which I'm not sure it will), I'm willing to bet they'll pay within 60 days once it's clear that a) the algorithm favors verified accounts and b) there's so much misinformation using misleading NYT usernames. https://twitter.com/... Michael Barbaro / @mikiebarb : Sniff, sniff. It was nice knowing you, Blue Check. https://twitter.com/... Clemens Wergin / @clemenswergin : Who pays for Twitter verification and who believes it means that an account is actually verfied is a moron https://twitter.com/... Andy Campbell / @andybcampbell : Even if this was a good deal for companies, and even if newsrooms got high traffic from twitter (we don't), there's zero incentive to pay for any feature announced by a CEO who rips up his own rule book each week. https://twitter.com/... Tom Gara / @tomgara : This take is both true and starting to feel a bit outdated given how relatively unimportant raw traffic has become for news businesses vs higher value stuff like engaged readers who subscribe etc https://twitter.com/... Lakshya Jain / @lxeagle17 : Twitter really doesn't drive a lot of traffic. Not sure how many news organizations are going to pay the astronomical fees for verification ($1K/mo per brand, and then $50/mo for each affiliate). Imagine a bill of >$10K a month for the minimal traffic you get from Twitter. https://twitter.com/... Christian Borys / @itsborys : Twitter blue is so stupid it's genuinely hard to believe anyone inside Twitter thinks this is going to result in anything but a complete disaster https://twitter.com/... @stevelackmeyer : I wonder at what point do the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Gannett and other news organizations agree to pick a replacement social media platform... https://twitter.com/... @senatorshoshana : Raises hand as someone who has worked at many orgs where we need traffic. Twitter can drive very high-quality traffic for sure! There's real ROI from it. But it doesn't generate high-volume traffic https://twitter.com/... Dan Nguyen / @dancow : The NYT gets a W here https://twitter.com/... Max Tani / @maxwelltani : LAT also won't reimburse: “Verification no longer establishes authority or credibility, instead it will only mean that someone has paid for a Twitter Blue subscription,” @sarayasin told staff. https://twitter.com/... Staci D Kramer / @sdkstl : LAT: >>"verification no longer establishes authority or credibility."<< https://twitter.com/... @mikeisaac : this is a no-brainer imo forget any feelings one might have about mgmt or the company — the way they are handling bluechecks now is punitive rather than value-adding and there's no actual safeguard against impersonation whether you buy it or not, which is the major concern https://twitter.com/... Adrianna McIntyre / @onceupona : is this the business school case I was promised https://twitter.com/... @_danilo : one of the great oaks of media says: “we will not be extorted” https://twitter.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : The Newsrooms Who Say They'll Pay For Twitter Blue Checkmarks For Their Journalists The New York Times: ❌ Washington Post: Undecided CNN: Undecided The Los Angeles Times: ❌ Semafor: ✅ The Daily Caller: Undecided Insider: ❌ BuzzFeed: ❌ HuffPost: ❌ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : I was curious about how news outlets were going to handle journalist losing their beloved blue checks. Would they pay? Allow people to expense it? Or just... no? Turns out it's a mixed bag! (BuzzFeed will not pay or allow us to expense) https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Oliver Darcy / @oliverdarcy : New: The New York Times says it is not planning to pay for Twitter verification: “We aren't planning to pay the monthly fee for verification of our institutional Twitter accounts,” a spokesperson tells me. See also Mediagazer