Reporter Who Found 3 Angry Tweets About Issue Guesses That’s An Article Right There

NEW YORK—Shrugging as he started writing the story’s lede, New York Times employee Lance Reede, a reporter who found three angry tweets about a particular issue, revealed Wednesday that he figured that’s probably an article right there. “Yeah, sure—you’ve got a few angry people on social media, you put all their words together on one page, and, boom, there’s your news article,” said Reede, explaining how embedding the three posts under a single headline suggesting that “social media wasn’t having it,” might even be enough to stretch the article to 800 words. “Is this an above-the-fold news story? No. Does giving a national platform to a few people with virtually no real-world relevance provide anything of journalistic value to our readers? Probably not. But, hey, it’s technically something that happened and people will click on it. You tell me why this doesn’t deserve to be published in the nation’s paper of record.” Reede added that, with any luck, he could reuse the article’s format next week when something else made a few social media users mad.