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Twitter's instability under an erratic and right-wing Elon Musk is a hidden opportunity for newspapers to rebuild and reclaim the public square of the internet and save themselves in the process.
From Tahrir Square in 2011 to Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 to the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, the social media site became the platform to track social movements around the world in real time. It also became the world's biggest call-out megaphone for putting bad dates on blast or putting mediocre airlines to shame (I'm looking at you, Southwest Airlines.)
Twitter isn't just an important organizing tool for activists—it's also indispensable for reporters looking to check the vibe on any topic or discover subject matter experts on a given beat. For instance, if you're a new education reporter in town, you can check twitter to get a lay of the land on the parents' groups, students' issues, and the school system's administration.
Twitter not only exposes systemic hierarchies, but it brings them together, creating an endless, fun, and informal conversation between reporters, activists, and officials that doesn't happen anywhere else online. It's become the de facto public square of the internet because of that frictionless quality and it's why so many activists and reporters are despondent about Elon Musk's decision to shift twitter into a Gab or Truth Social 2.0, rife with neo-Nazis, COVID-19 deniers, and bots and sycophants who do nothing but worship Elon's footsteps.
This creates a space for a service designed around the content it would carry, with checks on the nasty Nazis and ballooning bots built right in.
It's true that most newspapers have missed out again and again on being profitable on the web, taking a beating ever since the rise of Craigslist in the mid 1990s. News companies walked away from a stake in Netscape in the late 1990s, dismissed Facebook in the early 2000's, and conceded personal ads to apps such as Tinder in the 2010's.
This failure to capitalize on digital dollars after the advent of the web has battered the newspaper business—just look at the billions of dollars of online ad revenue that was lost to Google and Facebook. Those losses have resulted in wave after wave of layoffs from Gannett to The Washington Post, and many regional and local newspapers have closed or are on life support.
But past need not be prologue. While there are several alternatives to Twitter chomping at the bit to steal its crown, from the decentralized service known as Mastodon to Post.news, a newspaper-led alternative is surprisingly absent. After all, Twitter has been a springboard for freelance writers as well as newspaper staff reporters looking to promote their work. So why haven't the newspapers and magazines created their own alternative platform that they can monetize and promote their own content as well?
The emergence of a media-owned, media-first digital commons might just be the solution to Twitter's demise. A newspaper-industry-owned social media platform would not only help get rid of trolls and neo-Nazis in online discourse, but it would validate emerging activist voices worth listening to, drive local newspaper content, and raise much-needed ad revenue to newspapers.
Not only that, if newspapers used a consortium model for this new platform, they could create new a subscription model to keep themselves afloat and snag at least a sliver of ad revenue from Google and Facebook. This is more than an opportunity for newspapers to create a Twitter clone and make some money in the process—it's also an opportunity to create an innovative new platform that's full of insightful discourse and none of the trolling and stalking which has plagued Twitter and other social media sites.
The news industry has the resources to build a new social media platform despite this era of hedge funder-led belt-tightening in newsrooms. After all, the New York Times bought the online sports news website, The Athletic, for $550 Million in cash and spent more than a million to buy Wordle last year.
So, given Elon Musk's hostility towards reporters, activists, and his critics is it finally time to unfriend Twitter? Probably, since he recently tweeted that previously verified users like myself should be shot in the back of the head in outer space for having a blue checkmark next to their user names!
Today's hot new website might be tomorrow's pets.com, but 2023 is a golden opportunity for newspapers to take a crack at building the global digital square the internet needs and deserves.
Chip Goines is a Boston-based freelance writer and activist. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, WGBH, and on the Reuters wire service. You can find him on Twitter (for now) as @chipgoines or at chipgoines.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
