Elon Musk is his own spokesperson

Under new ownership, Twitter has cut its news service. A journalist writing about the company likens it to a "giant black box".

Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter was unconventional, aside from the fact that he paid for it – and that was only after his previous owner sued him for trying to back out of the $44 billion deal. So it stands to reason that, for journalists covering the company, the ensuing experience defied expectations.

High on the list of oddities: Twitter has no press office, because everyone on the team fled or was fired shortly after Mr. Musk took over. The absence of in-house publicists means journalists have had no one to call for comment when they are about to drop their dispatches on the latest happenings on Twitter.

"I just emailed the big guy," said Max Tani, a reporter for the digital news site Semafor. "It's been a giant black box, but maybe other people had it easier."

It doesn't seem to be, to follow a common refrain in articles about the company.

"Twitter did not respond to a request for comment," added a line in a February 3 post from the Wall Street Journal on the company's attempt to win back advertisers who had left since Mr. Musk's purchase.

"Twitter did not respond to questions from the Associated Press," noted the A.P. in a January 19 article about how searches on the site for the word "climate" yielded "dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change."

Similar lines have appeared in articles in The New York Times and a wide range of other media. "Our reporters continue to struggle to get official comment from the company," said Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesman. (The same goes for this article - Mr. Musk did not respond to an email seeking comment.)

Ordinarily, complaints from beat reporters focus on their battles with their PR counterparts, who alternate between obfuscation and heaviness.

"The norm in a big company is that there is a corporate communications office," Margaret Sullivan, a columnist for The Guardian and former editor of The Times, said. “You often get a no-comment. You often get something that isn't true or isn't helpful. But there's usually someone to ask. "

For journalists, the situation on Twitter can be a case of being careful what you wish for.

"It actually makes it harder to cover the business," Tani said. "Often you need someone on the other side, even if it's to push back and say something you plan to report is wrong."

Particularly since the main subject of the cover seems to be paying close attention.

A self-proclaimed 'free speech absolutist', Mr. Musk said that he wanted Twitter to be a public square where all ideas, no matter how unpopular, could be expressed. He has also cooperated with Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein and is currently working on a book about Mr. Musk. “He was very, very open,” Mr. Isaacson told The Times last year, “not only him and the people around him, but he was very good at allowing me...