Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Bill Keller obviously has something of a love/hate relationship with the internet. The former New York Times executive editor has written columns questioning the societal value of Twitter and web news aggregators like the Huffington Post. On the other hand, he’s rather active on Twitter, where he has more than 50,000 followers, and it was under his tenure that the Times became an enthusiastic user of that platform, among a slew of other digital technologies.

 

And now he’s officially a new media guru, having been a speaker at SXSW Interactive in Austin this week. Keller, who’s been writing for the Times’s Op-Ed page since handing over the top job to Jill Abramson in 2011, was a guest on a panel about digital bullying. After that discussion, I caught up with him for coffee and a chat. When I asked if it was okay to record our conversation, he quipped, “That depends what you’re going to ask me.”...