Mountain Xpress is publicly debating the appropriate use of its Twitter news feed as its most prodigious and over-the-top tweeter continues to mix racy jokes, sexual innuendo and spicy banter with news items on its @mxnews feed.
Below, you’ll find a string of recent tweets by Xpress staffer Michael Muller that are an example of what is clearly causing some consternation inside the Xpress ranks. In a recent blog post on the Xpress website, Publisher Jeff Fobes (@fobes) asks, “What do you think? Should we tell cut-ups to go tweet under their own name?”
Xpress, do you really have to ask? It’s clearly inappropriate. The @mxnews feed was set up specifically for news, and other feeds have been created for other content. For example, there’s @mxeat for food news, etc. If Xpress wants a comedy show, Xpress should set up @mxcomedy, or whatever they want to call their virtual slap-and-ticklefest.
By mixing banal sexual innuendo and adolescent insults in with its news feed, Xpress is slowly and surely killing its credibility as a news outlet. Can anyone really take Xpress seriously when it’s pumping out @mxnews tweets such as “And now, to what passes around here for the news” and “You can use your hands to smoke or drink coffee or whatever while we dance like an organ grinder monkey for your amusement.” What if television news veteran Christiane Amanpour or Washington Post reporter Dana Priest started tweeting farts jokes and snide commentary. Would we still take them seriously in any endeavor?
Xpressers killing time with smart-assed Twitter retorts are also likely to simply miss the news they’re supposed to be trafficking in. They’re not doing their jobs. Wouldn’t all that time be better spent creating original content, or doing some actual reporting that makes a difference in the community?
Is Muller funny? Sometimes. Is he outrageous? Often. Mostly his tweeting is juvenile, and every now and then downright offensive. Is that good for Xpress? Not in the news context. (More Muller tweets on his personal account here.)
Here’s a string of unedited tweets on the @mxnews Twitter feed. Again, it’s Michael Muller doing the tweeting. @Brewgasm is Xpress freelance writer and Edgy Mama parenting columnist Anne Fitten Glenn. @mxeat is Xpress staffer and food writer Mackensy Lunsford.
So, welcome to the show @Brewgasm. Can we call you just “Brew” for short? #avlshow
Tappa tappa squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee #avlshow
Excellent! @mackensy has sobered up and is ready to chat #avlshow
Looks like we’ve still got some technical issues #avlshow
@Brewgasm Anyway, I just heard as shocking statistic: 1 in 8 people do not have access to clean beer. Care to comment? #avlshow
@Brewgasm It sure turned some heads here in the bar. There’s all of a sudden a crowd of teenage boys here at our table #avlshow
@Brewgasm I hear that @mackensy is dating someone in high school. But I digress. Let’s talk about beer.
So ladies, do you have a favorite beer in town? And have you ever hung around the Citi-Stop to buy beer for underage boys? #avlshow
If I had known there were actually women around like you two when I was 14, things might have turned out a little differently #avlshow
@Brewgasm Well, that’s true. But we’re not here to talk about me. You must have 1 or 2 favorite boys. I men beers. #avlshow
I MEAN beers. Not men boys. Mean beers. I mean beers. #avlshow
Yeah, tell us. Whatever the hell that means. #avlshow
@Brewgasm I’ve known a few skunky boys in my day. Tell us, how do you maintain your hot body considering how much beer you drink? #avlshow
@MXeat Like totally the worst music ev-arrrr. #avlshow
So, I have these two hot women here with me and I’ve sort of forgotten what we are talking about #avlshow
Oh right. Beer. So @Brewgasm, you must have an all-around favorite brewery in town. #avlshow
@Brewgasm Have you ever had a lesbian affair? #avlshow
@Brewgasm Oh, it’s excellent — my favorite beer in town. I drink like a gallon a day. It’s why I’m always smiling. #avlshow
So @mackensy just pulled Mary Katherine Gallagher and smelled her fingers #avlshow
Check the Xpress video of this week’s WNC Chef’s Challenge between The Admiral and the Grove Park Inn Sunset… http://fb.me/CMFxJXn1
@Brewgasm There’s an idea. Weed infused beer. Of course, IPA’s taste like bongwater to me. Not that I’ve ever tasted it. #avlshow
@Brewgasm Most lesbians I’ve found like beer, but it’s usually PBR. #avlshow
Here I am, trying to have an intelligent conversation about beer and you two women keep talking about sex. It’s very distracting #avlshow
@mxnews What do you expect? We’re both healthy women in our twenties drinking copious amounts of beer. #avlshow
Oh lord, it’s gettin’ shloppy #avlshow
@Brewgasm Being the professional pseudo-quasi-neo-journalist I pretend to be, let me steer the conversation back to beer #avlshow #hic
@Brewgasm @mxeat So ladies, you must have a favorite brewery in town. #avlshow
@MXeat And on Saturdays, they have that guy with the scrimps. I love the Wedge. All their offerings are top-notch #avlshow
@Brewgasm Well, @mxeat has tattoos all over her body. Most of them we can’t even see. #avlshow
@fobes An unqualified yes. We decide what is news based on who feeds us or gives us drinks. That’s the policy as I understand it. #avlshow
16 Comments
[…] time Muller’s been at the center of controversy over his tweeting. See background here and here. […]
" . . .MX loves to cover stories that are largely about.. well, MX? . . ."
And sometimes the comments section seems like either staffers talking to one another (don’t they have internal e-mail or even face-to-face interactions?) or a very small "club" of people talking about the concerns of "the club." Even the publisher and one of the reporters appeared to be communicating recently via the comments section. What’s up with that?
Well said, Ann. Notice MX loves to cover stories that are largely about.. well, MX?
My fav was when a certain former editor wrote a letter complaining a new story in MX didn’t reference parts of a story he had written a few years earlier.
It’s like they take the "local matters" mantra to the extreme, by writing about themselves.
-=WL=-
Is this off topic?: John Boyle sucks, tweet or no tweet.
I stopped following mxnews tweets the moment, a few weeks ago, they tweeted about just how "gay" a certain local group could make any song. Reminded me of a teenage boy’s locker room, not an information publication, alt or not. They seem to tweet just to hear themselves talk with absolutely NOTHING of any importance to convey, i.e., teenage boy’s locker room.
Still love my paper copy of Mountain Xpress tho!!!
These tweets are totally inappropriate. Even if it is a joke, how can one ensure that the readers of these tweets will know it was a joke? Tweets flow in a stream and one might not catch the beginning of the stream to realize that mxnews is now tweeting humor, and immature humor at that. Most of the content in the tweets above would get an employee fired from his or her job if posted under the name of a company. I think that is just common sense. Would my newspaper want to be associated with implications of underage sex, excessive drinking, providing alcohol to the underage, and reporting news based off of who was providing beer by one of its employees? I wouldn’t want my company associated with it. Stop trying to be the Daily Show in a tweet…it wasn’t funny….just immature and a bit embarrassed that people not from Asheville who may have subscribed to the mxnews feed might think Asheville considers those comments news.
Curious that you want to mix it up with Michael Muller and your former colleagues (and employer). MountainX has taken swipes at the Citizen-Times over the years (didn’t you call out John Boyle once or twice?), but the Citizen-Times seemed to stay loftily above criticizing (or even acknowledging) its rival. What’s happening?
MountainX staffers often respond to comments that readers post about its stories. Citizen-Times never does. Do the reporters/editors there read the comments? Most of them are rubbish, but occasionally there’s a valid comment, even a news tip.
Mountain X likes the smell of its own farts.
Nuff said.
-=WL=-
One news reporter and commenter questions the journalistic credibility of another purveyor of news. The latter, in response, tells the former to engage in auto-eroticism. Backed by a full gospel choir. Are we talking about Jason Sandford and Michael Muller? Nope, but we could well be.
I’ve got heaps more respect for Jason Sandford than I do for Bernie Goldberg, and I don’t think Michael Muller is as funny as John Stewart. I do think that there is a rough equivalence when it comes to the spectrum of news offerings that are emerging in old Altamont. Sandford is dragging Western North Carolina’s paper of record into a more social and digital age. That’s great. I read the Citizen-Times website more because he’s there. I wish he would tweet more, and I’ve been glad to see him posting on Ashvegas more in the last little bit.
If John Boyle were tweeting as the Citizen-Times in the way Muller does for Mountain X, I am sure I would not want to follow him. Come to think of it, he might. I don’t follow the Citizen-Times. I do follow the Mountain Xpress feed. One of the reasons I follow it is to catch the Saturday morning show. Because of that experiment and the daily informative but fun style of tweets, I am more interested in reading the actual physical paper. This is all still an experiment for all of us, but I think the variety of journalistic styles is an asset to our community. And I still respect Jeff Fobes in the morning. Now if he could just get David Forbes on the nerd glasses thing…
(I just posted this over at the Xpress too, by the way.)
I also quit following about a week ago, because of the sheer volume of tweets as well as the quality of tweets. It’s like a constant stream of spam, especially if you aren’t glued to the screen all day and just try to catch up with the folks you’re following a few times a day. I think that would be most of us, as most of us have jobs that don’t give us time to play on the computer or smart phone all day.
I agree that the news handle should be used strictly for news, ideally breaking news. Nothing wrong with delivering the news with a little personality, of course, but the stream of jokes should be separated under a different handle.
It’s fine with me. MountainX’s reporting stands on its own merits, and if some inebriated banter on Twitter (which the majority of MountainX’s readers probably don’t follow anyway) is enough to discredit all the excellent news they cover in some people’s eyes, then I think those people need to adjust their priorities. If you don’t like it, no one is forcing you to follow it. You can still pickup the paper and read all the sex/cuss/alcohol-free news stories inside without having your delicate sensibilities damaged. I don’t think the tweets in question have any bearing on the quality of news the paper provides, and if anything it reinforces that these people are human beings and members of our community like the rest of us, rather than being dry, humorless drones like you’ll find at every other paper.
Annoying and childish tweets. There is no doubt that the tweets diminish any impression or sense that Mtn Xpress is a news organization. If Mtn Xpress has targeted an audience that appreciates such tweets it is only logical to expect they will lose their larger audience. Their choice.
First off, Xpress is an Alt weekly right? A traditionally non-traditional publication that has always tried (sucessfully, I would add) to differentiate its brand from the blandness of larger legacy ops. People want a human run twitter feed and they are savvy enough to parse comedy and news without following multiple accounts. Second, we’re talking about Asheville. This sort of thing fits the market it serves. Xpress has the rep I does for doing things just like this.
I agree that they should separate the two, if they MUST have a "funny" thread. Then I could just skip what they think passes for comic cutesiness — when in fact it’s just dumb and not at all funny. It’s like eavesdropping on a party where everybody’s hit the bong (and you haven’t) and they think they’re soooooo hilarious, instead of annoying and inane. I hope the MX’ers don’t take offense, since it’s their own boss who opened this discussion. If they do, screw ’em. But the answer is: Yeah, Jeff Fobes, the dumb tweets plain suck.
I don’t even live in Asheville, but if the editor of a paper has to ask if it’s inappropriate, the mere thought that it might be should be enough to have them remove the author from the stream and tell him or her to go post that stuff under their own name.
A paper can’t afford to lose credibility these days.
This past weekend my wife had to stop following and yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I stopped following as well. It’s just too much garbage. I signed up thinking I was going to get MountainX News….but having to sort through that many tweets in that short of a time span was just unbareable.