The editor of the Coventry Telegraph has now left the company following his suspension last month over his use of Twitter.
Darren Parkin, who was editor of the title since 2009, is no longer working for the company after an investigation was carried out, a Trinity Mirror spokesman confirmed.
HTFP reported last month that the editor had been escorted from the newspaper’s offices and suspended on full pay after staff raised concerns over his use of Twitter.
Staff at the paper have now been told that Mr Parkin has left the company and it is understood the process has begun to find his replacement.
The story about him leaving the paper was published yesterday by rival weekly the Bullivant Media-owned Coventry Observer, which initially broke the news about his suspension.
It reports that the claims against him are understood to relate to comments made to his followers on the social media site over a number of weeks.
Mr Parkin, 38, has not tweeted from his @CovTelEd Twitter account since 6 June.
He became the youngest newspaper editor in the country at the age of 24 when he took the helm at the Wolverhampton News.
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So what did he say? Some staff must know.
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His most controversial tweet read: “Must get home in time for the football. Pork or lamb chops? I never can decide.lol.”
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I never put anything work related on Facebook or twitter on personal accounts, neither do I tell people how many calories I burned running, or post a link to my route. I have a work twitter account which is soley for links to stories. People put all sorts of crap online, sadly in this case, cost the chap his job. Be warned people
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Seriously, was that it?
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Typical newspaper owners! They actively encourage the use of twitter – by all means feel free to give the stories away for no charge at every available opportunity! Be seen to hold any form of personal opion though (which is exactly the purpose of twitter) & be prepared to face the consequences. Idiots!
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Atrocious reporting of potentially important story – what the hell did he say? obviously it was about ‘comments made to his followers on the social media site’. it couldnt have been about comment he made to a bloke over the garden fence could it? otherwise we wouldn’t know, would we? dunderheads. so precisely what comments? and why are they a sackable/quittable offence? grrrrrrr.
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As a hands-on working editor of a weekly newspaper which is very much into putting stuff on web and Facebook I honestly don’t know how an editor had time to tweet.
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Observer – You’re clearly not my weekly editor then. They seem to have plenty of time on their hands!
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Observer: Or comment on news stories? You could have done two tweets in the time it took you to post that!
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Any editor who “doesn’t have time to Tweet” is living in the past and possibly on borrowed time.
Twitter is not extra work, it’s an extension of what we do.
It’s an incredibly valuable tool for any journalist.
Our role is communication. We communicate the news and what’s going on in our communities. Twitter and Facebook are excellent ways of doing that and also allow us to interact with our audience more than ever.
I’ve also lost count of the number of stories and contacts we’ve developed from social media.
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