Vincent Glad: Happy Tweet - Ecole de journalisme de Sciences Po

Ecole de journalisme de Sciences Po
Vincent Glad: Happy Tweet
Soumis par DENIS Daphnée
Quand il fait un papier sur "Comment devenir une star de Twitter", le réseau de micro-bloging, Vincent Glad sait de quoi
il parle. Avec plus de 10.000 "followers" (ceux qui le suivent), parmi lesquels la fine fleur de la scène politique française,
celui qui se considère comme un "jeune de service des plateformes Internet" sait faire parler de lui... en "balançant" sur
les autres.
La provoc' @vincentglad
Vincent twitte là où ça fait mal, comme quand il a pointé vers la supposée page Facebook de Zahia, le 21 avril dernier. Il
s'est aussi attiré les foudres de l'écrivain Michel Houellebecq en publiant un article sur «la possibilité d'un plagiat» de
Wikipédia par l'auteur. Portrait de celui qui sévit derrière les écrans de la rédaction de Slate.fr.
Crédit photo: capture d'écran du compte Twitter de Vincent Glad
Edité par Mélodie Bouchaud.
"Most people are surprised that I'm actually a decent guy"
The idea of meeting Vincent Glad is almost as frustrating as that of finishing a good book. When you have paced your life
with a fictional character whose most insignificant detail you have imagined, you often find that all you want to do is read
on, blissfully ignorant of what is out there in the real world.
As far as many French twitter and Internet "geeks" are concerned, @vincentglad does not have a life beyond computer
screen, lost somewhere in web-journalism limbo between Slate.fr and the blog Bienbienbien.net. He will only ever own a
red and blue check shirt, and will always shy away from a mysterious photographer as he looks down, hiding behind a
longish dark fringe. The smile on his face will keep making him look like he is laughing inside, maybe at one of the witty
jokes that have made him famous at the expense of most French politicians, journalists or celebrities.
Yet Vincent Glad is wearing a grey jacket today, along with a pair of blue jeans and sneakers, the perfect picture of
Parisian "casual cool". No smartphone or wired device of any sort in his hands. Instead, he is holding Jean Echenoz's
award-winning novel Les Grandes Blondes. He looks shockingly real for an Internet fiend. Shockingly nice, too. "Most
people are surprised that I'm actually a decent guy", he smiles, bemused.
Crédit photo: D.R
"Web schizophrenia"
In their defence, the self-professed "Twitter star" can be cruel in the digital world: he would "die for a good word",
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Ecole de journalisme de Sciences Po
although he often feels bad after. The list of his victims is long, like television presenter Nikos Aliagas whom Vincent Glad
exposed as a sleazy Internet flirt to his 10,000 web followers "because it was pretty funny".
He is also one of the first journalists to have posted a link to Zahia's facebook page, when Le Monde revealed the
underage call girl's name inthe midst of a scandal that linked her to famous footballers. An unforgivable mistake for the
blogger Bruno Roger-Petit who accused him of "throwing the girl to the lions" on the website Arrêts sur images. For
Vincent, it was merely a matter of showing how far one could go with the Internet when a newspaper gives someone's
initials away. He did "think about it" before making the account public, but then realised "someone else would do it
anyways" and clicked on the "send" button. Three days later, he lamented the young prostitute's loss of "a right to
numeric oblivion" on Slate.fr.
"Web schizophrenia", he admits. "You take part in a phenomenon as an individual, and comment on it as a journalist, but
the boundaries between your public and private life have been blurred". A symbol of Internet news-reporting, the 25 yearold had to learn as he went. He studied communication for three years before getting into one of the top French
journalism schools, in Lille, graduating at only 21. A "default choice", he says in retrospect "you can't do anything other
than teaching or journalism with my undergrad", especially as he cannot play music and "probably is a frustrated artist
too". Still, he certainly has mastered the art of irony, both in a 140-sign-tweet, and more extensively in his articles.
He is now one of the most famous names of Slate.fr, over and above more experienced journalists who are from different
backgrounds. But he does not think he has it all figured out: Web journalism is a "niche" that suits him, not an end in
itself. He has recently quit Slate to go freelance and start studying again, researching "digital culture". He would like to
publish an essay on the subject "once he knows it well enough". Ironically, paper, writing books, is what gets him going.
And it is endearing to see that there is room for doubt behind the Internet-frozen smile. Glad to meet you, Vincent.
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