Hi: I'm Doreen Marchionni (Ph.D. '09, Missouri School of Journalism). I'll be your intergalactic pilot on this journey through my dissertation. Send whiskey, please.
Few comments convey a kind of blithe ignorance about social media these days than rants about Twitter not being the equivalent of journalism/news reporting. Duh. But they persist, often from lofty heights: professors and senior managers in newsrooms.
The latest remark came from a man I adore and whose work I’ve promoted on this blog, The (London) Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger, a staunch champion of conversational journalism. Speaking to a crowd gathered for a panel discussion on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, he praised Twitter but noted it wasn’t the same as news reporting — and that reporters in general deserve a heap o’ praise for their terrific work in these tough financial times, the NOTW scandal aside.
Agreed. I would add that the very best news reporters wouldn’t be caught dead equating Twitter with journalism or reporting. Twitter is a pretty phenomenal reporting tool, not unlike the telephone. The phone hastened the speed to gather information for a story — goodbye telegrams, Pony Express and snail mail.
Twitter hastens the speed even further but unlike the phone, allows one-to-many communication. And my favorite feature: It allows reporting to occur in a human environment. If my research on conversational news tells me anything, it is that news preferences are shifting from product to process, from commodity to human relationships built around dialogue and interaction. That’s ultimately pretty good for democracy.
Suggesting Twitter isn’t journalism, then, is about as odd as saying the telephone is not journalism. I’m going to give Rusbridger the benefit of the doubt and suggest maybe he meant you still need real live reporters using that tool, and those reporters are harder and harder to pay for at newspapers these days.
But Twitter as an indispensable reporting tool and distribution channel, in good times or bad? Oh hell yes.
