NEW YORK — If Twitter is the town square for journalists, some are ready to step away.

That's happening this week at the online news site Insider — by order of the boss. Reporters have been told to take a week off from tweeting at work and to keep TweetDeck off their computer screens. The idea is to kick away a crutch for the journalists and escape from the echo chamber.

It shows how an addiction to Twitter's ever-rolling feed and the temptation to join has led to soul-searching in newsrooms.

Some of it is inspired by the reaction to the Jan. 19 demonstration in Washington involving students from a Covington, Kentucky, high school, which gained traction as a story primarily because of social media outrage.

AP