Los Angeles Times hires reporter to specifically cover 'Black Twitter'

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Los Angeles Times Managing Editor S. Mitra Kalita announced this week  she has hired a reporter to specifically cover ‘Black Twitter.’

The reporter, Dexter Thomas, has written for multiple outlets in the past, including Jezebel, Fader, The Guardian and Complex.

Thomas describes himself as an “internets champion” and “pretty good at video games” 0n his personal website.

Kalita’s announcement is below via Poynter:

Dexter Thomas joins us today to cover Black Twitter (which really is so much more complicated than that). He will work closely with the newsroom and #EmergingUS to find communities online (Black Medium to Latino Tumblr to Line in Japan) and both create stories with and pull stories from those worlds. Dexter is from San Bernardino and is a doctoral candidate in East Asian studies at Cornell University. He has taught media studies and Japanese and is writing a book about Japanese hip-hop. He began working in digital media at UC Riverside as a student director of programming at KUCR-FM (88.3), independently producing podcasts, music and news programs. He writes regularly on social justice, Internet and youth culture, and video games.

Hiring a reporter to specifically “cover” ‘Black Twitter’ has left some uncomfortable.

Thomas has already started to reply to some Twitter users’ concerns about being ‘monitored’ or ‘exploited’ by mainstream media outlets.

“What action specifically would you like me to take?” Thomas tweeted one user. ” None? Wait for the next person to do it worse than me?”

Some other responses are linked below: