CityBeat Internal Social Media Policy

At CityBeat, we recognize that our staff have their own social media accounts, and that on those accounts, we are allowed freedom of expression as protected by the First Amendment. However, we also recognize that our tweets, reels, posts, comments, likes, and shares reflect on the organization, and that what we do on social media affects how the community views both CityBeat and us.

When each of us joined CityBeat, we agreed to uphold the Mission and Guiding Principles of the organization, and that affects our behavior on social media. Our Guiding Principles of being Inclusive, Solutions-Focused, and Independent, in particular, are helpful guidelines as we think about what’s acceptable behavior on social media and what isn’t, for our staff.

To that end, we have developed the following set of guidelines for all the folks associated with CityBeat– our full-time staff and our contributors. We worked on these guidelines as a team, and have agreed to abide by them as long as we are associated with CityBeat.

• We are Inclusive, which means that we are not anti-anything. The list of anti- content is long, and trying to line-item every possible instance would inevitably leave out something important, so we’ll just say it this way – we will not post, like or share content that excludes any group in our community. As an organization, we condemn threats of violence for any reason, as well as racism, anti-semitism, and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. But we also won’t tolerate bashing any group online, because that behavior is not in keeping with our Guiding Principles.
• We are Independent, which means we do not share political opinions or endorsements in our own posts, or in posts we like and share. We are human beings, which means that of course, we have opinions. However, in our work, those opinions simply don’t matter. It is not our job to tell the public what we think, or what our opinions are. It is our job to objectively report the facts and let y’all make up your own minds.
• We are Solutions-Focused, which means we do not engage in negative back-and-forth. Nothing good ever came of a Twitter or Facebook comments fight, so we don’t have those. We will respond if someone has a question, and we’ll absolutely make corrections if someone points out a mistake in our work, but we will not engage in negative feedback loops on social media. Our phone number and our emails are all public information, so if you truly want to have a conversation with one of our staff, you can do that through those channels.

That’s it. Keep it civil, keep it focused on the work, and understand that the momentary dopamine rush of “owning” someone online isn’t worth undermining the hard work and dedication of our entire team.