Wednesday 28 November 2012

Worst job in SA media: running @timeslive twitter account

Pic: @Sipho_Stuurman

If you think you've had a tough day, spare a thought  for the poor soul who mans (or womans, it's the 21st century) who runs the Twitter account of The Times.

I used to think that the journalists who "pound the road" to go and collect us the stories, package them and
then deliver them to us had the worst job in South African media.  Not only do they have to navigate traffic, adverse weather and deal with uncooperative subjects, some of whom are not willing to go on record but they also have to convince their superiors that the resulting copy they is worthy of publication. But it turns out, the worst job in media is running the said twitter account.

When you're not frantically trying to insist that a fire drill that is said to have left some employees injured went well (to go down as a success, a fire drill has to be "as real as possible", apparently.  What will they do next time, engulf the building in actual fire?), you have are threatening eyewitnesses who dispute your version of events with the prospect of never winning again.



As you can tell, running this account requires balls of steel but if it was capable of shame it would have expressed a feeling of embarrassment when it tweeted:


Of course they were meant "women" and the tweet was subsequently changed after smartasses like me piled on with our derision.

And all this happened in one day.  And the sad truth is if this individual had stayed at home nobody would have missed their output because their newspaper and website don't report anything you can't get somewhere else.  Other than columnists, there's difference between what newspapers report anymore.

I do hope this poor person had a strong dose of whatever their favourite poison is at the end of the day.  They sure deserve it.

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