Tom Lee is unhappy about journo-twittering:
As a cheap and fun SMS interface for media outlets I have no beef with it; as a means of personal marketing for journalists, the pretense and lack of honesty is dismaying….I’d say the median journotweet is something like “getting ready to sit down for an i/v w
@spalin. the lady is a tough cookie!” when in fact it should be closer to “complaining abt blogs in line to pick up kids @ sidwell frnds. no poor people around!”
Peter Suderman concurs that journo-tweeting is “almost universally vapid and uninforming.” No argument from me on that score, but I suppose there’s nothing really all that wrong with journalistic self-promotion either. Having watched their demographics grow ever more AARP-ish for years, and having missed several boats already to get younger readers/viewers interested in their product, I suppose the news industry really, really doesn’t want to miss yet another one. They probably figure that Twitter is helping them capture the news consumers of the future.
Plus there’s the fact that every once in a great while, a reporter puts something useful up. And even if it happens only once in a thousand tweets, that still means you’d better be participating so you don’t miss out. There’s nothing worse in DC than having someone ask “Have you heard about ______?” and being forced to admit that you haven’t. Especially if the reason you haven’t heard it is simply because you’re too neanderthal and out of touch to have the right technology. Thus are boomlets born.
(But is Twitter a bubble? For those of you who think bubbles are easy to spot while they’re happening, you need to answer Right Now. And show your work, please. In a couple of years we’ll find out which of you was right.)
