The social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s may have been the open door to a reporting and writing style unlike that previously seen by the mainstream media and publishing houses of the day. Could the next generation of the New Journalism pioneered by Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer and others, already be underway? We’ve been hearing rumblings from the contemporary MSM for some time on the blogger/journalist issue and seen firewalls erected on previously free websites. Now, apparently feeling threatened, the Associated Press is whining at staff to stay off Twitter, even though they may be in the middle of, or even swept up into the midst of a developing event.
Associated Press Staff Scolded for Tweeting Too Quickly About OWS Arrests
“In relation to AP staff being taken into custody at the Occupy Wall Street story, we’ve had a breakdown in staff sticking to policies around social media and everyone needs to get with their folks now to tell them to knock it off,”
So will Twitter be the vehicle for an abbreviated style of New Journalism? Mathew Ingram has a few thoughts.
Memo to AP: Twitter is the newswire now
Updated: It’s a distributed digital-information network that gives subscribers short news updates in something approaching real time, whether on the web or a mobile device. If you said Twitter, you would be right. But that same description also fits traditional newswires like Associated Press and Reuters. So how are they trying to evolve and compete with this new social news service? According to an internal memo obtained by New York magazine, AP’s response is to admonish its reporters for posting news to Twitter instead of saving it for the company’s traditional wire-service subscribers — even though the news in question was about their own arrest in a crackdown on an Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
OTOH, Reuters is sounding a bit more pragmatic.
Reuters reporter Robert MacMillan made effectively the same point on Twitter, saying a news service that waits and tries to “save” the news for later is really just asking to be beaten by another service that decides not to wait. And Anthony De Rosa, the social-media editor for Reuters (the AP’s major competitor) wrote in a blog post that the wire service sees posting news to Twitter and other social networks as a key part of its business, not competition for the traditional wire
Save the news for later and be beaten by another service or <gasp> a DFH protester. Oh the shame!
Given the history of AssPress, I’m not too surprised that its corporate brass would be sour on Twitter. This is the same organization that was bullying bloggers not that many years ago for the “offense” of quoting portions of AP articles (if my fuzzy memory gets this one correct).
Truth is, the traditional outlets are no longer where it’s at when it comes to news. I think it is pretty safe to say that in the era of Twitter and Youtube that the way that many experience “the news” is quite a bit different than how we experienced it previously. Just thinking to my own patterns – I totally ignore network news outlets and rarely do more than scan headlines from the corporate papers online. Other than that, I check my Twitter feed first, and retweet items that seem of interest. If I want to read something a bit longer, a bit more measured and considered, I will go to a handful of blogs whose writers I trust to do just that (it wasn’t long ago when we considered blogs to be “immediate” and would go to trusted columnists for longer or more considered reading – times change). In essence, I sidestep traditional corporate media altogether. I doubt I am the only one doing so – and given my age, it’s safe to say that I came to Twitter a bit later than some of my younger comrades.
I’m not a regular Twitter user yet, but while Madison, WI was hot, I hung on the feeds for days. The only network news I’ve seen in 4 or 5 years is a little CNN at the bar where our son works when we stop in to visit. No TV at home – ever. Do we miss it? Nope, not at all.
The elite are losing control of information, and that means they are losing power, and they are freaking out over this.
I mean, I just saw my article on the RFK assassination published on the front page of Salon.com. That could never have happened even two or three years ago. The times really are changing, and I think your point is spot on. We’re ripe for an information revolution.
Congrats on making Salon! All of us are now potential reporters and publishers. I can hear the gnashing of teeth in boardrooms everywhere.
All the news that fits a clip…
“Don’t leave home without it” (your recorder).