Mighty Twitter shines again: Discovery hostage crisis*
Perhaps something not fessed-up to enough by some guardians of traditional journalism (aka old media), is that its classic reporting model has an unavoidable built in awkwardness. Steps: 1) the event happens; 2) the tip or report arrives to the editor or staff writer; 3) physical bodies are (cumbersomely) dispatched to interview, photograph or shoot, and write the thing up; 4 ) publication or broadcast… finally.
So however worthy and enduring this old model of spreading the news, it seems evident that the undesirable elements of delay and artificiality are inextricably interwoven into the process.
Viewed from this perspective then, Twitter and its amazingly democratic and efficient model of access and instant publication can only be seen as a useful step forward in execution of the news reporting task.
But the errors, the errors! you hear the purists cry. Yes (perfection eludes us yet again), but this is more than offset, in my opinion, by the spontaneous authenticity, the speed, and the virtually unlimited scope of delivery of the Twitter product.
The ideal solution, as some newspapers are (a bit sluggishly) embracing, is for traditional media to utilize Twitter as a indispensable new tool that has the potential to greatly enhance journalism.
For the most recent example of Twitter winning the news race, read Katy Gathright’s paean to Twitter in a blog post on Social Times (“Twitter Trumps Traditional Media in Discovery Hostage Crisis” Sept 2, 2010).
When everything old is still only old
Some answers to how new media differs from old media are offered in a report published yesterday by Pew Research Center (“How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from Traditional Press” May 23, 2010). The question was the focus of a 2009, year-long study by Pew.
First answer — the differences between the new and the old are substantial, Pew reports.
Excerpt:
Most broadly, the stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead in the mainstream press. But they also differ greatly from each other. Of the 29 weeks that we tracked on all three social platforms, blogs, Twitter and YouTube shared the same top story just once…
Each social media platform also seems to have its own personality and function. In the year studied, bloggers gravitated toward stories that elicited emotion, concerned individual or group rights or triggered ideological passion. Often these were stories that people could personalize and then share in the social forum — at times in highly partisan language. And unlike in some other types of media, the partisanship here does not lean strongly to one side or the other. Even on stories like the Tea Party protests, Sarah Palin and public support for Obama both conservative and liberal voices come through strongly…
So much for critics who claim that bloggers and other social media sites are only re-cycled imitations of traditional media. And the finding that new media content isn’t homogeneous indicates that it’s less susceptible to the pack journalism syndrome. That’s good news.
Another finding from the Pew study may point to why traditional media is struggling to gain the eye and ear of new generations of audience. Referring to content of new media sites, Pew reports:
…top weekly stories differ dramatically from what is receiving attention in the traditional press. Blogs overlap more than Twitter, but even there only about a quarter of the top stories in any given week were the same as in the “MSM.”
Instead, social media tend to home in on stories that get much less attention in the mainstream press. And there is little evidence, at least at this point, of the traditional press then picking up on those stories in response.
That last sentence packs a wallop.
