Clay Travis on why every writer/journalist needs to be active on Twitter

[Ice9]

And I agree that Facebook has probably "jumped the shark." When aunts and grandmas dominate a form of hi-tech media, it's about to be left behind.

Every time I log into Facebook now, it's telling me to subscribe to one of the 5,000 people who apparently "founded" Facebook, a "social media editor" at some newspaper 800 miles away, or Zuckerberg's ugly sister. And they're all wicked preachy. I can't take it anymore.

 

[Drip]

If you're relying on the television to bring you news, you're a lemming.

From Osama bin Laden being killed to the new coach at UCLA, I find out first about the news from my Twitter feed.

If you were on Twitter, so would you.

If I would have been on Twitter, I would have been one of the first to know that . . .

Brett Favre retired in the summer of 2010 and wasn't going to play that season.
Don Shula died.
John Wooden died on May 27, 2010.
Jon Gruden was coming to coach the Miami Hurricanes.

Only those things didn't happen (Wooden died on June 4). And the "lemmings" watching TV news didn't hear those things.

"Dewey Defeats Truman" used to be a once-in-a-generation thing. Now it's daily.

I can't get around this as being a problem. Others, apparently, are fine with it.

I agree. Everyone is more concerned with being first instead of being correct.

 

[21]

If you're relying on the television to bring you news, you're a lemming.

From Osama bin Laden being killed to the new coach at UCLA, I find out first about the news from my Twitter feed.

If you were on Twitter, so would you.

If I would have been on Twitter, I would have been one of the first to know that . . .

Brett Favre retired in the summer of 2010 and wasn't going to play that season.
Don Shula died.
John Wooden died on May 27, 2010.
Jon Gruden was coming to coach the Miami Hurricanes.

Only those things didn't happen (Wooden died on June 4). And the "lemmings" watching TV news didn't hear those things.

"Dewey Defeats Truman" used to be a once-in-a-generation thing. Now it's daily.

I can't get around this as being a problem. Others, apparently, are fine with it.

You're missing the point. It may not be a source of verified news, but it's a barometer of what the media is talking about, if that matters in your line of work. So when everyone is 'buzzing' about something, even if it turns out to be complete fallacy, we don't sound like clueless dummies when we're asked, 'Did you hear anything about....?' I'd rather be able to say, 'yeah, heard it, sounds shaky to me/looking into it,' than respond with, '(pause) Huh?'

 

[Azrael]

If you're relying on the television to bring you news, you're a lemming.

From Osama bin Laden being killed to the new coach at UCLA, I find out first about the news from my Twitter feed.

If you were on Twitter, so would you.

If I would have been on Twitter, I would have been one of the first to know that . . .

Brett Favre retired in the summer of 2010 and wasn't going to play that season.
Don Shula died.
John Wooden died on May 27, 2010.
Jon Gruden was coming to coach the Miami Hurricanes.

Only those things didn't happen (Wooden died on June 4). And the "lemmings" watching TV news didn't hear those things.

"Dewey Defeats Truman" used to be a once-in-a-generation thing. Now it's daily.

I can't get around this as being a problem. Others, apparently, are fine with it.

These were reports being passed along as facts by journalists?

 

[BTExpress]

These were reports being passed along as facts by journalists?

Favre and Gruden, absolutely. Gruden by the Miami Herald's beat writer, Favre by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Not only journalists, but journalists in the cities directly involved --- and thus, IMO, expected to be 100 percent accurate. I for one don't mind being clueless about things that aren't true. It's hard enough to keep from being clueless about the things that ARE true.

On one message board was the following . . .

"Paul Finnebaum just tweeted "Manny Navarro,from the Miami Herald: 'Hearing Jon Gruden has agreed to $3.4 mil deal to become UM's next coach. Trying hard to confirm...'"

Why not CONFIRM it --- as either true or untrue --- BEFORE tweeting anything about it?

And so it goes.

 

[Drip]

These were reports being passed along as facts by journalists?

Favre and Gruden, absolutely. Gruden by the Miami Herald's beat writer, Favre by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Not only journalists, but journalists in the cities directly involved --- and thus, IMO, expected to be 100 percent accurate. I for one don't mind being clueless about things that aren't true. It's hard enough to keep from being clueless about the things that ARE true.

On one message board was the following . . .

"Paul Finnebaum just tweeted "Manny Navarro,from the Miami Herald: 'Hearing Jon Gruden has agreed to $3.4 mil deal to become UM's next coach. Trying hard to confirm...'"

Why not CONFIRM it --- as either true or untrue --- BEFORE tweeting anything about it?

And so it goes.

Because it's more important to be first than correct.

 

[spikechiquet]

He writes: "Honestly, if you follow more than about 500 people on Twitter you're probably following too many people to actually get much benefit from Twitter."

Um, so I can only follow 500 people on Twitter? That limits my changes to get breaking news then.
How can Twitter be the "next big thing" if we can't even follow all the people we need to follow?

I can answer that...because most of the tweets people post are junk. Eliminate the junk and maybe...MAYBE!...Twitter will become the end-all, be-all.

 

[Van Lingle Mungo]

He writes: "Honestly, if you follow more than about 500 people on Twitter you're probably following too many people to actually get much benefit from Twitter."

Um, so I can only follow 500 people on Twitter? That limits my changes to get breaking news then.
How can Twitter be the "next big thing" if we can't even follow all the people we need to follow?

I can answer that...because most of the tweets people post are junk. Eliminate the junk and maybe...MAYBE!...Twitter will become the end-all, be-all.

Or ... you can ignore his advice and follow more than 500 people and use lists.

 

[Azrael]

These were reports being passed along as facts by journalists?

Favre and Gruden, absolutely. Gruden by the Miami Herald's beat writer, Favre by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Not only journalists, but journalists in the cities directly involved --- and thus, IMO, expected to be 100 percent accurate. I for one don't mind being clueless about things that aren't true. It's hard enough to keep from being clueless about the things that ARE true.

On one message board was the following . . .

"Paul Finnebaum just tweeted "Manny Navarro,from the Miami Herald: 'Hearing Jon Gruden has agreed to $3.4 mil deal to become UM's next coach. Trying hard to confirm...'"

Why not CONFIRM it --- as either true or untrue --- BEFORE tweeting anything about it?

And so it goes.

In my role as Devil's Advocate and Idiot DeLuxe, doesn't the word 'hearing' indicate that a rumor is floating around? Doesn't that let the Tweeter a little off the hook as far as "reporting" goes?

 

[Stitch]

No. Reporting you "heard" something is lazy.

 

[BB Bobcat]

I only follow about 250 people. I follow just about every legit MLB journalist in the country, and a few randoms associated with my alma mater, iPhone stuff, etc.

I am not interested in being the first to see every bit of news that happens relating to anything. When really big news happens (like Bin Laden's assasination) it only takes a few minutes before everyone, including baseball writers, starts talking about it.

As for the "hearing," I think that's a problem of twitter. There is such a push to get every detail ASAP, and also the medium is inherently "rumorish" that it suddenly becomes OK to report rumors like this.

I once tweeted that an MLB official had "heard that Team A had offered Players X and Y for Player Z." That was all I knew, and as I told people, if I knew any more I'd have written a story instead of a tweet. Anyway, it got circulated so fast and people started accepting it as fact.

But I did get about 200 new followers within 5 minutes.

 

[Azrael]

No. Reporting you "heard" something is lazy.

It also isn't reporting.