There are a wide range of considerations as to why a news outlet might want to retain verified status for its journalists. A newsroom leader at an entertainment news outlet who was not authorized to discuss his politics told BuzzFeed News that the publication will likely end up paying for the verification. Although this outlet is less at risk of the kind of misinformation that could start World War III, it has an ongoing problem with scammers trying to scam music artists by pretending to write for the publication and asking them to pay for (false) coverage.
Geoffrey Ingersoll, editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller, told BuzzFeed News that his organization will likely make the enterprise version, though he personally had no intention of keeping his check mark. “I had planned to let mine expire because I have no interest in being a famous nerd among journalists on Twitter,” he said. “Since verification became a payment, it has lost its usefulness to me, particularly looking for tweets from verified people just to get an idea of where the media is taking a story.”
The Daily Caller hasn’t decided which people in the newsroom will remain verified as part of the five-account package, and the outlet plans to review the analytics in a few months to see if the payment is worth it.
Insider also does not plan to pay its journalists’ checks. “The value of a blue check mark was that it said the person was who they said they were,” editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson told BuzzFeed News. “Now a blue check mark just says they are Twitter Blue subscribers. That doesn’t help Twitter users or our readers.”
Similarly, POLITICO will not pay employee checks. “In the future, a verified mark will no longer mean you are a verified journalist. Instead, it will simply mean you are paying for benefits like longer tweets and fewer ads,” Anita Kumar, POLITICO’s senior editor for standards and ethics, wrote in a message to the newsroom shared with BuzzFeed News. “POLITICO will not pay for you to subscribe to Twitter Blue. Of course, you can sign up on your own.
For freelance and freelance journalists, it may be worth it. “I am definitely paying for Twitter Blue. I actually signed up this week,” said Alex Kantrowitz, a former BuzzFeed News staffer who writes the Substack newsletter. great technology. “I don’t care about the blue checkmark, which could be a handicap right now. But getting additional distribution in the For You tab is worth the $8/mo given that distribution is the lifeblood of smaller media brands like Big Technology.”
Beyond getting a blue checkmark, Twitter Blue includes features like the ability to see the most shared articles by people you follow on Twitter, which many journalists find useful. Twitter is also apparently working on a way to let Blue subscribers hide their check mark, which could make paying the modest fee more appealing to someone who just wants the features but thinks the check looks scary.
BuzzFeed Inc. (which includes the various accounts of BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed News, Tasty, HuffPost and Complex) does not plan to pay or allow employees to spend blue checks. “As a company, we don’t think it’s a wise use of resources to pay for people to keep a blue checkmark that’s no different than anyone else, amateur medical expert, Elon stan or otherwise, who’s just willing to to pay the fee for a blue check,” said BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Karolina Waclawiak.
Ellie Hall and Tom Warren contributed to this reporting.
