Roanoke Times suing former Va Tech beat writer for access to Twitter account

I'm left wondering how and where and why that surname stuck with a family in the first place ...

 

I've looked, and it doesn't appear that the Roanoke Times has hired a replacement for Bitter on the Va Tech beat. For a publication clearly concerned about keeping its audience for VT coverage, how is it that they don't have someone yet?

 

The money they needed to hire a replacement was probably blown on the legal fees over a Twitter account. Idiots.

 

They hired Mike Niziolek. He is not tweeting because of the ongoing litigation, from what I understand.

 

OK, now I'm seeing his name pop up. Not sure why the sports section isn't tweeting his content out, or why he wouldn't be tweeting about Virginia Tech on another Twitter account. That's a surprise, and a mistake.

 

Probably because they don't think they'd get much of their traffic for VaTech from his account. For most papers, Twitter rarely gets many clicks for stories.

 

Oh, I know this all too well. It's just silly that a company that values Twitter so much that it's suing a former employee for 150k over an account is doing nothing to promote the new guy. You'd think they'd be pimping his work out pretty hard.

If I were him, I'd be pretty pissed. There's been little acknowledgement of his work.

 

Once more for the people in the back: TWITTER DOES NOT MEAN MORE PAGE VIEWS.

 

Not having to be sucked into Twitter as a beat writer? Sounds like a dream.

 

That will obviously change, though, with the way the company values Twitter. And with the way other companies value it, one would have to think that being a beat writer without a Twitter presence would limit ones ability to find a job beyond this one.

 

Someday we will look back and laugh and laugh at the idea that people thought Twitter did anything for page views. It won't quite be CueCat stupid, but it will be remembered with the same shake-your-head hilarity.

 

Absolutely, though it doesn't appear that day will be anytime soon. Editors are now more invested in Twitter than ever, despite the fact that it hasn't been proven to drive online traffic.