Comments on: Should Journalists Use Twitter?

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:26:11 +0000

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This post was mentioned on Twitter by starmoon: RT @journalistics Should Journalists Use Twitter? http://bit.ly/y0qOc...

By: Log

Log — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:54:36 +0000

Surely the problem’s in the poll. If you offer yes / no options to a question like Should Journalists Use Twitter, you’re not allowing for the people who don’t give a toss about Twitter to register their indifference. (I’m assuming this wasn’t a 4th option – the numbers add up to 99%, and I really think “I don’t care” would have garnered more than 1% of the poll)

These people, when forced into a yes or no, are obviously going to choose no – why would they choose yes? We’ve all seen bafflement and indifference towards Twitter, and witnessed how it mutates into aggressive negativity when exposed to situations that take its uniquity as a starting point.

Moreover, the third option is wilfully facetious, forcing the pollee to admit to ignorance they don’t genuinely possess. Internet polls have a bad reputation for a reason: polls like this one.

By: Carlos R Hernandez

Carlos R Hernandez — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:38:47 +0000

I am comfortable with having journalists on Twitter, and would especially like to see the corresponding demographics of those who answered the NYTimes poll.

By: Zephyr

Zephyr — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:51:49 +0000

I am all for the advancement of technology and see the internet as a primary future of social development, and think that’s wonderful. In that respect, by all means journalists are perfectly free to embrace twitter and whatever other internet technology they want.

But something completely different, in my opinion, is the fetish news organizations have gotten for Twitter specifically. CNN has been the worst in this regard. What they are doing is really just pandering to the popularity of these social network. Because they want to embrace the future? Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I think they’re just trying to capitalize on the latest trend. When CNN shows their twitter pages on the news and read out people’s tweets on the air, it really just comes off to me as a gimmick for ratings.

I’m thinking of a specific instance I saw a newscaster (I think it was CNN, but I don’t remember) reading off tweets about Palin’s resignation. The tweets read out were superficial, unintelligent, and added nothing of value to the story. At the least, if they were going to try this in earnest, they could have actually picked out the best of the bunch, right? The touch screens and “live” input from viewers looks fancy, but there’s really no substance there. I watch the news to see a concise and at least semi-intelligent recap of the world’s events, not the rantings of the average internet-goer.

…/end rant by an average internet goer.

By: Mandi

Mandi — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:30:54 +0000

I think journalists should have twitter accounts. As someone interning in PR, I always search twitter to see if I can “figure out” a journalist before I pitch to them. You can get a good feeling for someone just by reading their tweets and it also makes them more human. To me it just seems natural that journalists should have twitter accounts; if not they could be missing the next big viral headline.