{"id":35206,"date":"2015-09-14T11:19:19","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T10:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=35206"},"modified":"2015-09-17T17:39:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T16:39:41","slug":"the-bmj-today-a-weekend-of-tweets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/09\/14\/the-bmj-today-a-weekend-of-tweets\/","title":{"rendered":"The BMJ Today: A weekend of tweets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/journalists\/andrew-m-brown\/\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Brown<\/a>, obituaries editor at UK newspaper <em>The Daily Telegraph<\/em>, gave a great talk to me and other colleagues at <em>The BMJ<\/em> about the <em>Telegraph<\/em>&#8216;s approach to chronicling the lives of assorted establishment figures, rogues, villains, entertainers, and clergy.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Telegraph&#8217;s<\/em> obituaries are legendary, and Andrew described how the title had historically used certain codewords to communicate a deceased person&#8217;s homosexuality, alcoholism, or the fact that he or she was a crashing bore. He was invited by our own obituaries editor, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/about-bmj\/editorial-staff\/birte-twisselmann\" target=\"_blank\">Birte Twisselmann<\/a>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, we now live in more enlightened times, and thankfully <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/obituaries\/11833684\/Oliver-Sacks-neurologist-obituary.html\" target=\"_blank\">its obituary of neurologist Oliver Sacks<\/a> included not only a direct reference to him being gay, but a lovely 1961 picture of him in motorbike leathers in Greenwich Village.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s great to learn that our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/uk\/news\/obituary\" target=\"_blank\">own obituaries<\/a> are also much appreciated (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/351\/bmj.h4800\">particularly Geoff Watts&#8217;s one about Sacks<\/a>). <a href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0318.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-35208\" src=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0318.png\" alt=\"IMG_0318\" width=\"240\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0318.png 240w, https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0318-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a>Here&#8217;s what weekend tweeter Patricia Elliott (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Trisha_the_doc?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\" target=\"_blank\">@Trisha_the_doc<\/a>) had <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Trisha_the_doc\/status\/643002540469129216\">to say<\/a>.\u00a0As you can see, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Trisha_the_doc\/status\/642999153950355456\">she also liked our<\/a> BMJ Confidential article about &#8220;evidence based optimist&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/351\/bmj.h4577\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Marmot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Patricia was not alone. Fellow tweeter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/laurevans311\" target=\"_blank\">Lauren Evans (@laurevans311)<\/a>\u00a0waded in to say she sometimes envied people their obituaries, and that they can make her feel inadequate! This certainly isn&#8217;t our intention!\u00a0On Friday I spoke to a retired doctor, now living in a London nursing home, who was looking for the obituary we published of her sister, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/bmj\/300\/6738\/1520.full.pdf\">Monica Cronin<\/a> (also a doctor), in 1990. It was great to be able to dig it out and send it on to her.<\/p>\n<p>Another nice weekend tweet came from Marissa Borck (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kickasana\" target=\"_blank\">@KickAsana<\/a>), who <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KickAsana\/status\/643114596224663552\">liked the blog post<\/a> we <a href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/09\/08\/ilooklikeasurgeon-uniting-a-diverse-global-surgical-community-on-social-media\/\">published about<\/a> the social media campaign <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/looklikeasurgeon\" target=\"_blank\">#LookLikeASurgeon<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fellow tweeter Ed Fitzgerald (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dredfitzgerald\" target=\"_blank\">@DrEdFitzgerald)<\/a>\u00a0was similarly positive about our decision to include campaign images as our print issue &#8220;picture of the week.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0326.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-35211\" src=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0326-150x150.png\" alt=\"IMG_0326\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0327-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-35213\" src=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0327-1.png\" alt=\"IMG_0327 (1)\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0327-1.png 320w, https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/09\/IMG_0327-1-300x225.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Twitter can also be a source of constructive criticism, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kidneydoc101\">Prof Liz Lightstone (@kidneydoc101)<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kidneydoc101\/status\/642981450611064832\">tweeted the link<\/a> to an open letter to the editor of <em>The BMJ<\/em> about our decision to &#8220;publish and fanfare a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/351\/bmj.h4596\" target=\"_blank\">poorly based paper<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0on weekend deaths. The<a href=\"https:\/\/butnhs.wordpress.com\/2015\/09\/12\/an-open-letter-to-the-editor-of-the-bmj\/\" target=\"_blank\"> blog accuses of us<\/a> of not &#8220;bigging up the NHS.&#8221; This debate is also being played out in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/351\/bmj.h4596\/rapid-responses\" target=\"_blank\">rapid responses<\/a> to the paper.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>David Payne<\/strong> is digital editor, and readers&#8217; editor,<\/em> The BMJ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week Andrew Brown, obituaries editor at UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, gave a great talk to me and other colleagues at The BMJ about the Telegraph&#8216;s approach to chronicling the lives of assorted establishment figures, rogues, villains, entertainers, and clergy. The Telegraph&#8217;s obituaries are legendary, and Andrew described how the title had historically used [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/09\/14\/the-bmj-today-a-weekend-of-tweets\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5750],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bmj-today"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}