I have long been an admirer of Edward Wasserman’s work. When I was presenting a series of ethics seminars, Our Readers Are Watching, for the American Press Institute, I frequently recommended Wasserman’s Miami Herald columns on ethics in a list-serv for participants.
But his latest work shows how smart people can write stupid things when they don’t take the time to learn and understand the topic they are writing about. Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, clearly is smart. His thumbnail bio with his columns says he was educated at Yale, the University of Paris and the London School of Economics.
Apparently that meant Wasserman was so educated he didn’t have to learn anything first-hand about Twitter before writing about it. His latest column, How Twitter poses a threat to newspapers, revealed so much ignorance about Twitter that I knew without looking that he had never bothered to use Twitter. But I look anyway. It’s good journalism to do some research and see if your assumptions are correct. A quick check using Twitter’s “find people” function showed no Edward Wasserman on Twitter. (Update: Wasserman confirmed in an email response that he has not used Twitter. His response, which shows a refreshing humility and thick skin, is in the comments.)
Twitter does pose some threats to newspapers, though I see it as more of an opportunity. As more and more people get their news from Twitter (and not just because journalists and news sources are Twittering, but from people tweeting as they live the news and from Twitter aggregating tweets as news unfolds) and other social media, newspapers need to use these tools effectively and adjust our print products to this rapidly changing world.
But that’s not the threat that Wasserman sees from Twitter. Here’s the real threat he sees:
The danger is that Twitter will keep reporters off the streets and in front of their screens, that it will further skew journalism toward seeking out, listening to and serving the young, the hip, the technically sophisticated, the well-off – in short, the better-connected. The people who aren’t being heard now aren’t sending out tweets.
This is the line that most shows Wasserman’s ignorance about Twitter. You can use it when you’re on the street. Many of us do use it at our computer screens (where we write our stories and columns, analyze data and do other important research, so computer screens aren’t bad journalism tools, as Wasserman implies), but Twitter was actually designed for use as a text-message blogging platform. When you sign up to use Twitter (as Wasserman would know, if he ever had), it encourages you to use it on a mobile device.
Reporters who are using Twitter often aren’t sitting in front of a computer screen in the newsroom. They are out on assignments, Twittering to be first (or at least quick) with the news and to connect with eyewitnesses and so on.
And I can’t let Wasserman get by with the shot about “further” skewing journalism toward the young, hip and technically sophisticated. Please. Every audit of newspaper content (I have conducted some myself) shows that our content is heavily skewed toward people my age (that’s middle age) and older (especially if you don’t count sports coverage, where most athletes are younger). Middle age and older is our demographic, both in readership and in content.
As Steve Yelvington tweeted sarcastically this morning after linking to Wasserman’s column:
Journalism is just, like, so totally hip and young already.
Among the many reasons newspapers don’t have much audience with people who are young and hip is because our content too often reflects ignorance of the world they live in. Such as this column by Wasserman.
(Postscript: If this post sounds a bit familiar — well, beyond the fact that I just write a lot about Twitter — yes, this is the second time I have ripped a Miami Herald columnist whose work I otherwise respected for his ignorance in writing about Twitter. Leonard Pitts did much the same thing in Feburary.)
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Thanks for the post, Steve. There’s a whole raft of publishing media people that are in danger of falling by the wayside. As you say, it’s a fantastic opportunity. My own traditional market of motoring magazines is dying, in my view. My post on why they’re missing a trick with video was popular, but none dare comment publicly on my blog about it:
http://tinyurl.com/cjt78m
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I think that Wasserman’s column totally missed the point about the power of twitter and how reporters can utilize it.
You could take his entire column and replace twitter with computer and tweets with emails and have the same argument ten years ago.
The fact is that Twitter can be a powerful crowd sourcing tool for reporters. I just wish Wasserman would have taken the time to learn that.
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Chip,
I made the same argument (substitute email/computer) hours after writing the Wasserman post in this post about similar ignorance in a piece by Paul Farhi:
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Thanks to Ed Wasserman for giving me permission to publish his email responses to me, both quite humble and thoughtful. He sent this response yesterday:
Hello Steve,
“Thanks for the heads-up and the compliments. You make good points, and you’re quite right, I haven’t used Twitter myself. I write about a lot of things I haven’t done myself, but I agree, in this case that’s a shabby excuse. Frankly, I already wage a daily battle to keep from spending too much time on the Web or exchanging e-mail, and I’m finishing up work on my own Web site that will make matters even worse, so I’ve been reluctant to start in on an even more alluring networking tool. Let me say, though, I thought I was writing to offer praise of the technology. I had read a bunch of stuff, particularly this reporter’s guide to smart uses of Twitter, http://mashable.com/2009/05/14/twitter-journalism/ , and came away hugely impressed with its potential to improve journalism. The headline on the story focused on the threats to newspapers, but as you can see from the column itself, those largely consisted of undermining newsroom authority, something I don’t care all that much about. (I was perhaps too dismissive of that, actually. Loyalty isn’t something to be sniffed at. I need to give some more thought to what exactly a reporter owes his/her bosses.) You make an excellent point about the ‘further skewing’ throwaway line, and I cringed a little when I wrote it, since yes, newspapers, like evening newscasts, suffer from a retirement-home fan base. But I would say, in my partial defense, that if there has been a consistent obsession in the newsrooms I worked in, it has been with appealing to the young. Nearly all the initiatives I knew about or had a hand in were directed at that. So I should’ve talked about aspiration, not accomplishment. It’s maybe ironic that Twitter, for all its revolutionary appeal and potential, might end up helping news organizations do exactly what their marketing departments have been pleading with them to find a way to do for the past 30 years–draw in a young demographic–though hopefully without some of the distortions in coverage priorities many of us fear would go with that.
“I enjoyed your provocative remarks. And you’re right, I’m not that smart.”
I emailed back, asking permission to post that as a comment, and he responded today:
“Sure, no problem. Some of your readers will seize on the fact I’m a non-user (hence, in their eyes, an outsider), but I’m hopeful they’ll focus on my interest, which is in how new communicating tools redefine connectedness and create new obligations & duties. As an aside, it’s always been interesting and impressive to me how much hope new communications technologies almost invariably give rise to. The early days of radio broadcasting were full of confident pronouncements that the airwaves would be full of high-minded cultural stuff, and radio would bring education to the masses. Likewise, broadband cable would produce participatory democracy, communications satellites would be a powerful force to overcome third world poverty. And they do do amazing things. But somehow it’s never quite what people, especially their most exuberant fans, initially think. I’ll probably take part in Twitter, but my needs are less for messaging links than for discursive ones. I’d rather be able to hold forth with you at length via e-mail than cope with the brevity that a more tightly focused medium like Twitter demands. True, maybe I’d benefit from having to get to the point, but for now, I’m easy enough to find as is, and I’m glad to say, plenty of people do.”
I should add that I have written plenty of things more misguided and ignorant than the Wasserman comments that I criticized here. I do appreciate his candor, humility and willingness to learn.
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I agree with the fact that many articles talking about Twitter have been written by reporters or researchers who have never used it and therefore cannot understand it.
But I believe Mr Wasserman does have a point when he talks about the danger only @listening to and serving the young, the hip, the technically sophisticated, the well-off – in short, the better-connected.” Yes, not all twitterers are young and hip, but we do tend to forget about the people who just don’t have internet access or don’t use social media.
Take Iran, for example, and the courageous twitterers who have been reporting on the protests. It is still a good source for reporters, but it only gives you the view of the people who have the access to the technology, even if it’s your mobile. We are, for example, following the current events in Iran through the courageous tweets of young, urban people there -but that shouldn’t be confused with the whole picture in a huge country with massive rural population.
I’m not saying everyone thinks tweets give you the whole picture, but that danger still exists.
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Elisa,
You are right, of course, that a reporting effort that only uses Twitter would be incomplete and unbalanced. But that’s true about using any single way to reach sources. I am not aware of anyone who has suggested Twitter should be used to the exclusion of other tools.
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