Now that Twitter is Writing the First Draft of History, Where Does that Leave Journalists?
Iran changes everything. Lots of professional journalists are pretty mad at the web. They blame it for sucking away ad dollars that pay their salaries. They view blogs and social media as low quality, unoriginal, and owing their existence to the work produced by real journalists. The wonderful writer Buzzr Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, spoke for many reporters last year when as a guest on Bob Costas’ HBO show he denounced blogs as being “dedicated to journalistic dishonesty” and responsible for “the complete dumbing down of our society.” In February of 2008, I wrote an essay for FastCompany.com, a website I ran, called The Media is Social arguing that journalism and community-generated content should become a tightly-integrated hybrid. The digerati approved; lots of professional journalists made it clear to me they did not. But anyone who still believes that social media is anything other than a powerful force for good and must be part of the new digital journalism (which b
