henry copeland:
Fun idea, but why should editors have all the fun? Let readers choose own sentences to tweet. pllqt.it/CXYYBw cc @abeaujon
Itzkoff — with whom I used to work at Spin — and social media editor Michael Roston chose the sentences, Lavallee said, at least one of which is actually too long for a tweet. That one gets abridged, Lavallee said. You’re not required to tweet the same sentences the Times chose, but a tweet using that link will drop you onto that exact point on the page.
“I think that gives us comfort in providing these prompts without making us feel like we’re putting words in people’s mouths,” he said.
“I basically looked for two kinds of tweetable content: first, for standalone anecdotes that SNL nerds like me would gravitate to and want to share around,” Itzkoff says via email. “Then, I looked for individual quotes that would just about fit in a 140-character format with a link and, ideally, the speaker’s Twitter handle. (See Marc Maron’s line about possibly being high on pot when he met with Lorne Michaels.) Just a bit of educated guesswork trying to imagine what readers would be drawn to, and what would make the best traveling billboards for the overall story.”
- www.poynter.org