When did Journalists come to believe that Twitter, Facebook and other forms of electronic media was quality journalism?

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Siddhartha

Lifer
Oct 17, 1999
12,505
3
81
Originally posted by: RbSX
Now I know this post isn't exactly on politics and news, it's more of a criticism.

With the gag on journalists in Iran I realize that one of the very few methods of gathering news is through amateur video and through twitter messages, and emails.

While the situation dictates that this is the only method of collecting information, it seems that more and more media outlets are becoming dependant on facebook and twitter. I mean come on, how do they think that using media forms such as this is acceptable or credible?

It seems to me that journalists are getting lazy, news is becoming amateurish, but to me this is complete drivel.

When I was taking some journalism classes last semester, amateur news reporting was a hotly debated subject, ultimately as a class we decided that while a camera in everyone's hand was useful, ultimately there was no scholastic standard and the stuff that was making it as news was really a joke.

Really, in the city where I live news channels would dive into a person's facebook to steal pictures. (Yes I realize that if people don't want stuff to be seen they can set their privacy rules).

I think it's really pathetic for CNN, NBC, CBC, etc etc to scavenge peoples facebooks and twitters for news.

What do you guys think?

What we are seeing here is the "news" is experiencing a paradigm shift due to technology driven change.

par?a?digm \"par-e-'dim also -'dim\ noun [LL paradigma, fr. Gk paradeigma, fr. paradeiknynai to show side by side, fr. para- + deiknynai to show ? more at diction] (15c)
1 : example, pattern; esp : an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype
2 : an example of a conjugation or declension showing a word in all its inflectional forms
3 : a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated
par?a?dig?mat?ic \'par-e-dig-"ma-tik\ adjective
par?a?dig?mat?i?cal?ly \-ti-k(e-)le\ adverb

(C)1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Recently, there was a Washington Post opin about how Facebook was corrupting today's youth and some ancient Greeks thought that writing was a danger to their civilization.
 

JonathanYoung

Senior member
Aug 15, 2003
379
0
71
The thing that bugs me the most about modern journalism is that nobody seems to care about proper spelling and grammar anymore. It's considered "uncool" to be a "spelling Nazi".

Examples in the OP: "Dependant", not capitalizing Facebook and Twitter, "peoples", capitalized "Journalists" in the title.

Obviously, different standards are used in different situations, and since this is a message board the standard should not be expected to be high. Still, it seems like most of the people who act like they can "turn it on when it counts" can't really do so because they're so used to posting on internet message boards!

EDIT: To the OP, I don't mean you specifically, I'm just giving you a hard time. :D
 

Phokus

Lifer
Nov 20, 1999
22,994
779
126
Originally posted by: Deeko
Its not just regular news - sports news do it too. ESPN has written full-length articles based around 40 character tweets from their favorites like Terrell Owens.

Its annoying.

The patriots tweeted their draft picks before they made their actual picks, it was awesome :thumbsup: