Tweets of the Week: Gov. Pence’s Just IN News Agency

Local and national reactions to the Indiana leader’s announcement that a state-run media arm is coming
UPDATE, January 29, 2015: Amidst the media hubbub and public scorn, Gov. Pence has announced that the Just IN news site will not see the light of day.

What to make of a not-yet-live media organization when it is revealed by another? When the former is to be run by the State of Indiana? And when it’s funded in part by taxpayers’ dollars? So many questions. The tweets below don’t really have answers—they can’t yet—but they do offer responses ranging from contempt to amusement. And away we go:

 

Whereas internal documents have shown intent to publish articles, personality profiles, and editorials, Gov. Pence himself played off the unborn media entity as a benign calendar.

 

Indiana senator Joe Donnelly replied strongly this morning:

 

 

Even so, you can try. It was a matter of (brief) time before a parody Twitter account surfaced:

 

Such parody accounts can often be cloying and unfunny, but this one’s actually really good:

 

Then there was this:

 

John Gregg, Gov. Pence’s dispatched foe from the last gubernatorial race, didn’t take too kindly to the news:

 

Even a national news player got in on the social-media fracas:

 

Journalists up in Fort Wayne got their licks in as well:

https://twitter.com/kfrancisco/status/559862941630341120

 

Another reporter harked back to Gov. Pence’s days as a journalist-defending Congressman:

 

A former Indiana secretary of state’s name was dropped into the mix:

 

Speaking of Charlie White, his reply to the news was swift and harsh (and visual):

https://twitter.com/indysentinel/status/559886952858923009

 

The Indianapolis Star‘s former Statehouse reporter, Mary Beth Schneider, made her thoughts known—and it turns out Gov. Pence’s media maneuver has recent precedent at the state level.

 

Democratic leaders toed the party line, as could only be expected:

 

Finally, some Hoosiers spared no comparison, with one likening Gov. Pence to the departed leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il—as a Team America marionette, no less.