The BBC journalist behind the popular “Tomorrow’s Papers Today” service has spoken out on Twitter’s “toxic wasteland” of trolls who target him simply for tweeting the front and back pages of newspapers.
Desk editor Neil Henderson – and sometimes colleagues Helena Wilkinson, Helen Miller and Allie Hodgkins-Brown – is sent the next morning’s papers every night and tweets them as a voluntary service independent of his job at the corporation.
It is loved by scores of Twitter users, with Mr Henderson’s tweets receiving up to 15 million impressions a month.
Yet he and his colleagues are regularly savaged by trolls. This can range from baseless accusations of BBC bias to personal abuse.
In an interview with the Standard, however, he stressed: “We’re not going to be hounded off.”
Tomorrow’s Papers Today was started by colleague Nick Sutton in the early days of Twitter, in 2011. Mr Henderson would help out, before taking over in 2017 when Mr Sutton stepped down.
In that time, Mr Henderson said Twitter has gone from “the best party that you could go to, ever” to “a toxic wasteland”.
In 2008, when Twitter launched, “it was full of people you would never normally meet, saying interesting things you would never normally here.
“It was an educational experience as much as a social experience.”
Now, abuse and trolls are part of that experience - even if the audience as a whole is "largely appreciative".
“While I’m willing to blame Brexit,” Mr Henderson said, “I’m not sure it’s wholly that. I think the problem is that our society is polarising.
“People are at odds and Twitter reflects that passion, that problem. The consensus isn’t there on Twitter. It’s [people] jutting into one another in a brittle, antagonistic kind of way.
“What we experience at Tomorrow’s Papers Today is a kind of backwash from that. Tweeting some front pages – with their opinion, comment, political biases – that puts us in the firing line.
“People come to it and just have a go: ‘Why’s the BBC tweeting that?’”
He added: “There’s a streak of misogyny on Twitter as well. A streak of hatred for women. That is very perturbing and that is aimed at some of my female colleagues.”
But even as newspaper sales continue to decline, Mr Henderson said Tomorrow’s Papers Today remains as useful as ever.
“I think we have a hugely supportive base who like what we do. I love newspapers and believe they are an important part of our culture.
“I also think it’s really important people read things they do not agree with. It’s important for your intellectual framework. That’s why newspapers are vital.
“So we are just going to keep on doing it. We’re not going to be hounded off.”
On a personal level, can it be a chore to tweet 20 newspapers late every night? “I don’t really think of it as a personal sacrifice," Mr Henderson said.
"I’ve sort of reached the age after a day’s work where sitting on the sofa with the cat and my other half watching TV is pretty much all I can do physically! So picking up an iPad or an iPhone is not a huge sacrifice.
“The problems start when you’re at a dinner party or the pub. I’m pulling my phone out in the corner… it gets me a bad reputation as someone obsessed with the news. But that’s pretty minor on the scale of things.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/tomo ... 59766.html
