Reluctantly I must tell you that Leonard Pitts was clueless when he wrote about Twitter.
One of the highlights of 2008 for many of us in The Gazette newsroom was the October day when Pitts visited. He was speaking in Iowa City and I asked him if he would swing by Cedar Rapids and spend some time with our staff, talking about writing and journalism and the issues of the day (it was the week before the election). He graciously agreed and we had a delightful time. He has long been one of my favorite columnists and I now consider him a friend — the way you call someone who was friendly to you a friend, even if you only met once or twice (I actually met Pitts earlier at a conference in Wichita).
So it is with some regret that I write here that Leonard Pitts didn’t do his homework when he dismissed Twitter as a waste of time.
I understand the pressure Pitts must feel to produce thoughtful columns about subjects on which he is knowledgeable. I must confess that I have more than once approached my column deadline without a clue what I would be writing about that week (and Pitts writes columns more frequently than I do). When I got a good idea with the deadline looming and started writing, I realized that I didn’t understand it as well as I thought I did. Writing raises questions and it’s an awful feeling to not know the answers, with that deadline looming (fortunately as the editor or, now, the information content conductor, I have the clout to abuse deadlines).
Usually I pause to do some research, but I guess the context already tells you it’s hasty research (which I must admit can be dangerous). Sometimes I have written around the gaps in my research, making the column vague where it should have been specific. Those aren’t my best columns and I know it. I try to stick to topics that I know or to allow myself time to learn.
I’ll tell you this: I know Twitter far better than Leonard Pitts. Readers and commenters on my blog often say I spend too much time on Twitter myself or that I encourage my staff to spend too much time on Twitter. That may be (though most people who say that don’t know how quickly you can use Twitter). But when I write about Twitter, I understand what I’m writing about.
When Pitts promised solemnly that he would never Twitter, that was a dead giveaway that he didn’t know what he was writing about. You can’t learn about Twitter by browsing a few people’s tweets and reading or watching reports on how members of Congress tweeted during a presidential address.
(I should add that Pitts has written eloquently about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and presidency. Odd that he missed how deftly Obama, who has 362,785 followers used Twitter.)
To learn how Twitter works, you need to use it, follow a few people, write a few tweets and see if the interactions have any social or professional value to you. If you spend a week Twittering actively and decide that it’s not worth your time, then write about that and I’ll respect you even though I think it is worth my time. But when you criticize something without using it, I know you don’t know what you’re writing about.
I have blogged before here about the value of Twitter to journalists. I will admit I can become tiresome on the topic. Some have called me a Twitter evangelist and I don’t shrink from that label.
I’ve seen too many examples of Twitter’s value in journalism and beyond. Another blog I read before getting to the Pitts column today (I read it from a Twitter link before seeing it in The Gazette) told about the role Twitter played in an attempt to rescue snowboarders trapped in the Alps by a blizzard. And another post I read today by Chuck Tryon responded (without mentioning Pitts) to the growing chorus of uninformed criticism of Twitter. Tryon correctly notes that simplistic criticism usually “views Twitter in isolation from other media.”
Pitts complained that Twitter is used to share the “the banal, the mundane, the everyday.” That’s true, and I’ve been guilty of that. But you could say the same about conversation. Does that make conversation a bad thing? When I say no, I think back on that great conversation our staff had with Pitts last October. Similarly, I’ve had great exchanges on Twitter, gathering insights about my business and the people I work with.
I’ll tweet a link to this blog post shortly and my blog stats will show me how many people linked to it from Twitter (or from Facebook, where I use a Twitter application to post my tweets automatically as updates). The people who link to me understand that Twitter is more than complaining about late flights. I’m not saying I don’t tweet about late flights. I do. But the people who follow me know that I also tweet links to interesting things I read (even Pitts’ column today). They follow me because they like the mix or at least don’t mind it.
Twitter is a form of communication. Communication and opposable thumbs are supposedly the things that make us a higher form of life than other animals. Those two things come together in Twitter, where my thumb sometimes hits the wrong keys on my cell phone, but usually I manage to communicate anyway. As a form of communication, Twitter is neither good nor bad. Like email, radio, television, books, newspapers, magazines, blogs and text messages, some tweets will be funny, useful or profound and some will be silly and useless.
And the people who use all these forms of communication start to get good at them — identifying the books to read, the TV shows to watch, the people to follow on Twitter.
The tweets about late flights serve a valuable purpose that appears to be right in line with Twitter’s positioning. You’re letting your family/friends know you’re running late. People who follow you for other reasons probably get that, even though they don’t have to pick you up at the airport.
It is fascinating to me how many different ways Twitter and other e-media tools can be used. Some minds are open to the possibilities, some aren’t. C’est la vie.
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Came across your post while doing a vanity Google search. I didn’t see the Pitts article until after mine had gone to press. Would have loved to have the opportunity to respond to his article, too.
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[…] 4.) I first heard of and connected with Joan Ball via a medium for communication called twitter. Twitter is getting a bad rap from the likes of Leonard Pitts and others who haven’t actually used it, but I have found it valuable for making and keeping great connections. Steve Buttry, editor of our local paper the Gazette, defends twitter and takes Pitts to task for not doing his homework. […]
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i am so over twitter…. its obnoxious at this point.
i cant help but think of this
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=219519&title=twitter-frenzy
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[…] Steve Buttry also has an engaging post on columns that dismiss Twitter. In particular, he focuses on a column by Leonard Pitts, normally one of my favorite national columnists, who decides, after briefly browsing the site, never to Twitter. […]
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Twitter is to the future of journalism what betamax was to the future of home entertainment.
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Name dropping and ego building in the same post. What a star you are. Will you approve this comment? We’ll see.
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Twitter is a waste of time Mr. Buttry. It is all about self promotion and self love for those who think they are important. You continue to cite stories that were broken on Twitter. Big deal. A few stories…yippie. That is hardly a statement supporting the value of it.
It is simply a self indulgent tool that is the flavor of the month right now and one of the reasons why newspapers are sinking. Reporters should be working on stories, not spending their days and nights tweeting away about what they had for lunch or dinner. Twittering takes away from reporters doing what they should be doing…reporting and covering stories.
Your continued instance that Twitter has some major value shows me that the information content conductor is going to run this paper off the tracks.
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I am fascinated by the strong opinions Twitter engenders in those who know so little about it. Reminds me somewhat of the early days of cell phones.
Say what you want about self-promotion and self-love. Those are opinions and everyone is entitled to them. But facts are facts and here’s a fact: Twitter is an essential part of covering stories for reporters. It connects them with people who have information. I have too many examples from my own staff and throughout journalism for that to be arguable.
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I don’t use Twitter,but I can see its value.
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Mr. Buttry, you don’t seem to get it. How do you know I don’t have a working knowledge of Twitter? That’s a pretty big assumption on your part and it seems to be the only comeback you have for anyone who questions the great value of Twitter…you just don’t use it. How do you know? Frankly, that’s a pretty arrogant and self serving stance on your part. Yet, you because you are so desperate to support the value of it, you call people like Pitts “clueless”. Even if he used it for a week or a month, you would still probably call him clueless and such because he didn’t grasp it like you do. Have you ever opened your mind to the idea that maybe you are the one who isn’t getting it?
The fact is you seem to think that the world revolves around wasting time on Twitter and ignore the aspects that have been the backbone of good solid reporting and journalism.
Twitter will go the way of betamax in a short period of time and in the end, it will hurt a great newspaper because you think Twitter is the answer for newspapers and journalism.
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I use Twitter. I follow many Gazette staff members, and actually have come to communicating pretty regularly with a couple of them. It makes me feel more personally connected to the product they are putting out. Plus, when they post a new column, or blog post, or news story, they link to it on Twitter, and I can read it instantly on my iPhone or laptop at home.
I’m not a kid, either. I’m 32 years old, and consider myself extremely tech-savvy. I’m not on Facebook (cause then too many people from when I was 15 could find me!) but I have really come to value Twitter as a tool to stay instantly connected to news.
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Pitts admitted he didn’t know much about Twitter by proclaiming he would never tweet. You didn’t and apparently don’t, but your ignorant references to reporters wasting time on Twitter revealed that you don’t know either how valuable it can be or how little time many Twitter users actually spend with it. I don’t think the world revolves around Twitter, but I know that too few journalists have bothered to learn its value and because I have spent much of my career teaching journalists, I am now teaching them how to use Twitter (among many other things).
You may be right that Twitter will go the way of betamax. That’s how technology and culture evolve. But for now it’s a valuable tool (not the answer, and I’ve never said it was; please stop mischaracterizing what I say) and journalists should use it.
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This is off-topic, but I thought I’d ask this in the most recent post in hopes of getting an answer:
I am unable to find a link back to GazetteOnline.com from your blog. Am I missing it, or is it really not there? Seems odd to not provide such a link.
To keep this comment somewhat topical, the lingo associated with Twitter drives me crazy. Tweeb, tweets, RT/retweet, I have a hard time taking these terms seriously. I know that other things in life are filled with what can only be considered jargon, but Twitter’s all sounds so dweeby.
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Again, Mr. Buttry, how do you know I don’t have experience with social networking and specifically….your version of Scientology…Twitter? In fact I do have quite a bit of experience with social networking on the web and find Twitter to be very self serving and don’t see any value in it for a journalist to spend time Tweeting. But, of course, that just make me ignorant, right?
Obviously, you attend the Church of Twitter and anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant. That’s a real good way to treat a long time subscriber to a once fine paper that you are harming with your instance that Twitter is the be all end all when it comes to journalism in this day and age.
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from a consumer standpoint, twitter is very exciting. There have been community meetings that I have not attended that I was able to keep informed on because I knew several people that were present and tweeting. If you follow a single twitter feed, you miss the point. It is a way to get an aggregate view of what is going on in the group you have defined as your community. If I know that five of the people I follow are attending something, that makes me realize that it might be a worthwhile event. I think again, that if you arent getting interesting news from your twitter feeds, you may just be following boring self involved people. I have never broadcast my lunch plans except when a new restaurant opened up in town and it was worth letting people know about. I hold the people i follow to a similar standard.
Anyone who can’t see the value in an easy system for figuring out what is going on in their community either is uninterested and not a viable twitter consumer, or does not have a very interesting community.
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Knowing about communication is really what its about. Twitter doesn’t promote real communication. Your article proves this. You have a cogent article on why you think its a good tool. Nice long responses of well thought out ideas – some anyway.
Twitter as a communication medium – that’s not communication.
Don’t get me wrong if I were a business owner I would include twitter with all message boards where people complain. But I need way more than 140 characters. Twitter – the ME TOO of the internets. At least tweets are small and not clogging the system of tubes. Sweet – the last 2 lines could be a tweet and yet by itself it would make no difference in anybodies life.
This post about 5 tweets and counting.
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I tried Twitter, but deactivated my account after a few weeks. I found it exhausting to keep up with everyone’s “news.” I know an attorney who twitters all the time and is also constantly updating his movements on Facebook. I honestly wonder how he finds time to do any real work or enjoy his family. I am on Facebook…for about 15 minutes every evening. It’s a great way to stay connected to family and friends, but I’m not on there to post my every activity. There IS such a thing as “too much information” or TMI, as my friends call it.
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Off topic:
I don’t know what further changes are in store for March 10, but I have to say I already don’t care for the obvious change your editorial page has taken in the past couple of weeks. As a 18-year reader of the Gazette I have noticed a distinctly rightward turn in your editorial cartoons, columns and letters. It’s a terrible imbalance favoring right wing views. Last Thursdayd I received my subscription renewal notice and I’m seriously wondering if I need that aggravation in my life. The letter you published today (Saturday) about Marxists in the government was a nutso letter any other newspaper would have declined to print. You’re going downhill rapidly.
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Thanks for the feedback, Joseph. I passed your message along to Jeff Tecklenburg, The Gazette’s opinion-page editor.
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I wonder….if the time the Gazette “reporters” spent on Twitter were to be spent researching real news would the articles be more complete or more accurate than they are now? That would be a nice change. Currently, I tend to take anything I read in the Gazette with a grain of salt, considering the source.
Oh, and Mr. Buttry, I find your constant refrain of ‘people who find Twitter a waste of time simply don’t know how to use it’ to be incredibly condescending and annoying. Thank you for reaffirming my initial impression of you.
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Just a thumbs up to paper girl. Gotta say I agree!
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[…] who didn’t heed the warning above and have read this far. But your comments are welcome on my most recent previous blog post about Twitter, where I published nearly all the critical comments I received. If you want to be critical here, at […]
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[…] Understand Twitter before you write about it […]
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[…] Understand Twitter before you write about it […]
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[…] have been many responses about how you need to understand twitter before you write about it (including this funny parody of a Times.co.uk column). All I want to add is that twitter is what […]
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[…] Herald columnist whose work I otherwise respected for his ignorance in writing about Twitter. Leonard Pitts did much the same thing in […]
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[…] might have gone a step further than Wasserman or Leonard Pitts by actually registering, possibly as @paulfarhi or @farhipaul. I can’t be sure because […]
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[…] I’m getting tired of those rants (maybe you are, too). I previously noted how Leonard Pitts, Edward Wasserman and Paul Farhi wrote foolish things about Twitter without bothering to learn what […]
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[…] in their writing. I think writers should learn something about the topics they address. I ripped Leonard Pitts, Paul Farhi, Edward Wasserman and Philip Lee for writing in ignorance about Twitter (could have […]
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