AP reporter tweets Raiders coach fired, except he wasn't

I have "used" it. Just because I don't have an account doesn't mean I'm unaware of its existence or how it works.

I've admitted as much, with the caveat that news sites linked to Google by and large put more thought into what they post. I guess technically it's the same thing as using Twitter only for reporters who post links to their work, but so what? I'm getting to the same place no matter what.

Unless I'm glaringly ignorant of the world and no one's telling me, I really don't get why I need to be on Twitter. And, I certainly don't believe it will save journalism, or even benefit it much.

 

I like the notifications I get that will say that a certain number of people I follow just retweeted something from Schefter, Rappoport or someone and then I'll check to see what it is. If I expect news to be breaking, I'll sometimes get notifications every time a certain person tweets. I do that during free agency and leading up to the draft. I have to turn it off after a day or two because some of these guys tweet every 10 minutes and it gets to be a bit much.

 

This is why, as I stated earlier, whenever something big happens, I usually wait to read news coverage until 12-18 hours later. I'm intimately familiar with the editing process and how ugly it can get, and with the modern news cycle, that process takes place in front of the world, in real time. I prefer to wait until everyone gets their shit together.

I was a national news editor when the Virginia Tech shootings happened, and it was the first time I watched a roomful of reporters trolling MySpace and Facebook for information as to what was going on. When that "coverage" got to me, it was full of some of the most shitty reporting I've ever seen, and I spiked most of it. Nothing I've seen since has convinced me that anything has fundamentally changed about social media and its reliability.

 

Social media is as credible and reliable as the people who provide the content. Just like any other medium.

 

Right. It's as credible and reliable as reporters who are under management orders to "publish first, correct later." It's as credible and reliable as "crowdsourcing."

A lot of my problem with Twitter is just a reflection of my larger frustration with the media in general.

 

@lpolgreen I love Twitter. But I don’t care if @deanbaquet tweets. He does so many other much harder things so well.

 

I would argue that Adam Schefter was never this careless and did not partake in this kind of unattributed tomfoolery before the advent of Twitter. And I think that goes for a lot -- maybe even ***most*** -- people who are on the thing.

The medium really is the problem here.

 

One thing Twitter has done is make the race to be second an important thing to journalists, too. It used to be - and we still talk in these terms - that it was the race to first. But now, someone like Adam Schefter doesn't want to not be the second person to convey the news. Or, if a second person has already done so, the third. It's not just about being the first person breaking your own news now. It's about re-Tweeting someone else's break before the other guy.

It sucks.

 

The good thing is that it was *only* 76 million homes and 7 million businesses.

‏@latimes 41s JPMorgan says 76 million households, 7 million small businesses affected by data breach http://lat.ms/1rQKPbw

 

The problem with that is most Twitter users don't "filter" the material like journalists might. A lot more people trust National Enquirer stories as fact than anyone wants to admit.

 

The retweets are the biggest reason that I don't use it as often as I should. It is so hard to filter through who's saying what and what is credible. Maybe if I spent more time with it, I could get things filtered down better. I'm just too lazy, or I just don't care enough.

 

http://www.rjionline.org/news/little-birdie-told-me