It's been a harrowing couple of weeks for Jonathan Martin, the Miami Dolphins football player. It's been an educational week for Jonathan Martin, the journalist.
The latter Martin, a political reporter for the New York Times based in Washington D.C., wrote a first-person account of receiving tweets intended for the Dolphins offensive tackle who filed a complaint with the franchise and NFL about a hostile work environment - led by the bullying of guard Richie Incognito - after leaving the team.
The reporter said he received a flood of Twitter messages as soon as Martin walked out on the Dolphins, amused that the masses mistook his Twitter account for that of the football player.
"Then there is the fact that I have 'NYT' in my Twitter handle (@jmartnyt), and my history nerd avatar is a picture of Lyndon B. Johnson's two beagles, Her and Him, perched on the south lawn of the White House," Martin wrote.
The Times employee went on to talk about getting "an equal mix of hang-in-there notes of encouragement and pointed inquiries about the robustness of my manhood."
But after the Dolphins lost 22-19 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football, Martin reported a tip in the scales toward more negative tweets.
" 'U got a beagle dog as ur profile pic n ur in the nfl,' " wrote @calli_631, who also used a word a vulgarity to accuse me of ruining the Dolphins' season," Martin wrote in his article for the Times.
The journalist said, however, that as the Dolphins story of Martin and Richie Incognito has intensified, the misunderstanding ceased to be amusing.
"I feel bad for my fellow Jonathan Martin - lord knows what his Twitter feed looks like - but the whole affair has also been a reminder about how ugly discourse can be on the Internet," Martin wrote. "During campaign season, nasty, even abusive, emails and Twitter messages are standard fare for political reporters. Partisans (or, in this case, fans) say things online they would never contemplate saying to the face of a stranger, let alone one the size of the brawny Jonathan Martin. As one person said in a message to me this week, it is 'keyboard courage.' "
Martin said he received a tweet from Baltimore sportscaster Gerry Sandusky about the mistaken identity.
" 'I have walked where fate has now taken you,' wrote @GerrySandusky, who surely had it harder than me."
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