For the news articles themselves, each of the major companies is using a major CMS system, many of them developed in house or licensed from another major media organization.

But for things like journalist microblogging, Mastodon seems like a stand-in replacement for Twitter or Threads or Bluesky, that could theoretically integrate with their existing authentication/identity/account management system that they use to provide logins, email, intranet access, publishing rights on whatever CMS they do have, etc.

Same with universities. Sure, each department might have official webpages, but why not provide faculty and students with the ability to engage on a university-hosted service like Mastodon or Lemmy?

Governments (federal, state, local) could do the same thing with official communications.

It could be like the old days of email, where people got their public facing addresses from their employer or university, and then were able to use that address relatively freely, including for personal use in many instances. In a sense, the domain/instance could show your association with that domain owner (a university or government or newspaper or company), but you were still speaking as yourself when using that service.

YikYak, GroupMe, Ready Education, Remind, UniBuddy, Viva, etc. Etc.

Their US and Australian divisions are solid. The UK one varies, and has some decent people, but also has a persistent infestation of TERF/SWERFs. A few high-profile ones have left after their comments became irreconcilable with the paper’s ostensibly liberal/progressive line, but you still get regular Observer opinion columns about pronoun-mongers sexualising our children or other scare campaigns. There’s a rumour that the editor, Kath Viner, is herself a TERF and personally protecting them, though I haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other.

This seems like a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

That's exactly right.

Tbh that would put a lot of strain on someone else’s server. It’s not like they’re a small business that can’t afford a dedicated server, and each journalist could have a dedicated handle

Bluesky is at risk to be bought by another Musk in the future

BlueSky can be bought and influenced. No thanks.

You mean Future-X?

I wouldn't consider any of those an alternative to twitter

disable JavaScript?

me neither. never

i'm on mull with ubo and i can read the whole article 🤷