Nieman Foundation at Harvard
“If Twitter goes away my job would actually be really different,” I told my husband this week.
“You mean like you’ll actually have to do work?” he said.
NO, I mean that if Twitter goes away, Journalism Today loses a bunch of really concrete things! And here they are: A list of things that journalism will lose, and ways that it will change, if Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter leads to its shutdown.
The version of the story below includes embedded tweets. I’ve saved a second version that includes tweet screenshots so that we can preserve this post if tweet embeds stop working.
Please keep the ideas coming and I’ll update this list. You can find me on Twitter as long as it stays up, or email me here.
The tweet that originally inspired me to do this piece was by Jenée Desmond-Harris, who writes Slate’s Dear Prudence column.
I know a lot of people hate it (who doesn't hate to be criticized or feel misunderstood?) but I think being forced to hear how readers who aren't your buddies react — and to then always have that other POV in the back of your mind — is a very good thing
— Jenée (@jdesmondharris) November 11, 2022
Brent Staples, an author and member of The New York Times’ editorial board, and Stewart Coles, an assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, weighed in.
I am sure you know this. But you have indeed hit on something: How the advent of social media (combined with online publications) blackened a very, very white public "discourse." A significant portion of anti-Twitterism originates in this fact.
— Brent Staples (@BrentNYT) November 11, 2022
Yes, and research bears this out! Twitter’s influence well beyond its walls, esp. into journalism, plus #BlackTwitter’s power over the platform, has been a game changer for Black people’s sociopolitical power over the last decade or so.
And that seems to be why some hate it. https://t.co/KVwYaXOHCW
— Chokely Carmichael🥋(StewartColes@mastodon.social) (@StewartColes) November 12, 2022
Quote tweets have been a crucial part of this, noted Johnathan Flowers, a lecturer at American University.
This right here: call and response is a crucial part of what makes Black Twitter work on Twitter, especially as the affordances of the site allow the elevation and transformation of call and response into something unique by means of the platform. https://t.co/2XK4lVCHmd
— Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Citational Rebel (@shengokai) November 7, 2022
Twitter has been an excellent place to publicly call out news organizations for doing dumb or lazy things. This ties in with Desmond-Harris’s point above, but the potential for being publicly called out has likely contributed to many media companies’ decisions to move away from outdated notions of “objectivity.”
It’s not that pile-ons and public shamings are always a force for good. But Twitter has served something like the role of a public editor, and that is beneficial. If editors and reporters know there is a high likelihood of being publicly called out on something, they’re likely to spend more time making an argument airtight, tracking down a few extra sources, or checking their data.
A recent NPR tweet is a good example of how Twitter has nudged news outlets toward being more direct. Of course, NPR would not be tweeting if we didn’t have Twitter. But what I mean is that we would be less likely to see this framing of news if Twitter hadn’t helped push toward it.
BREAKING: Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024. https://t.co/iqIcaN3SZA
— NPR (@NPR) November 16, 2022
Sports journalism is going to be a bit lost without major personalities dropping big news on Twitter before anywhere else
— Mike Denison (@ThatMikeDenison) November 16, 2022
Goodbye, screenshots of the juiciest part of a story. Goodbye, reporter threads that break the best parts down so you don’t have to read the whole thing — in the most well-done cases, these are “like a tldr or instant annotation by an expert,” my colleague Sarah Scire noted.
They'll hit a pay wall for a lot of (really good) reporting. Maybe they'll subscribe, maybe they'll find free coverage (which could also be really good, but often is from non-local / imo less-grounded TV outlets in emergencies). + also get news slower of course
— Jake Sheridan (@JakeSheridan_) November 16, 2022
When a family member was diagnosed with a rare medical condition, I only had to spend about an hour on Twitter to find a handful of experts on that condition nationwide. All responded to my DMs within a few hours and one doctor gave me her personal phone number.
Twitter gives journalists easy access to the academic and scientific communities. We can learn about new scientific research straight from the source (and academics’ threads about their own research are often invaluable; see also that “TLDR” that Sarah mentioned above.)
It’ll be harder to identify scientific sources that aren’t already well known, and much harder to find new scientific stories that aren’t broadcast as press releases to everyone on a mailing list.
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) November 16, 2022
And sourcing will simply become more difficult.
Finding sources will be back to the hard way — listening, asking others, reading local news coverage (whoops! There is no local news coverage any more!).
— SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN 🦬 🗽🤘🏽 (@sivavaid) November 16, 2022
DMs, falling somewhere between a text and an email, are an amazing way to get in touch with sources, even if the conversation later moves off Twitter. I don’t think someone’s ever declined my request to “follow for DM,” whereas another email in the inbox is easy to ignore. DMs in most cases just don’t seem as burdensome as emails.
The part of Twitter that would be most annoying to lose is as professional networking service. Have been interviewing a ton of people for a book project and probably 60% of interviews originate w/Twitter DM. Higher success rate than email; easier than tracking down a phone #.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 18, 2022
Because no thank you, LinkedIn.
lack of an internet directory. can look up a person or org's profile and get a semi up to date view of where they work/what's going on. it's also one place to look rather than finding the about us page on every website
are people going to update their sites instead? hope so!
— erika owens (@erika_owens) November 16, 2022
“This tweet should be a story” is a real driver imo
— jaimegreen.net/book (@jaimealyse) November 16, 2022
If you couldn’t attend a conference, you could learn the highlights from Twitter, pointed out Eder Campuzano, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
* Less public criticism and feedback, leaving a gap in correspondence between reporters and their audience.
* Another effect: Power centers in newsrooms going unchallenged when they stumble.
* Live coverage of conferences and workshops. I learned so much for free over the years.— Señor Eder Campuzano (@edercampuzano) November 16, 2022
