Twitter Can't Cure Cancer! But the Right Pro-Am Mix is the Future of Journalism

All Twitter needed this last week was for Ashton Kutcher to be named the compromise president of Iran. Then the perfect circle of social networking, information gathering, and real-world events would have been balled up tighter than a Microsoft intellectual property-rights case.

But in actual life, the news gathering nexus of old and new has been stumbling and lost down alleyways of wrong questions and masturbatory debates among journalists and other media specialists.

CNN, the original cable news outlet, had been both viciously caned by Twitheads via a Twitter scarlet hashtag for not doing its job, then partially redeemed by endlessly featuring Tweets from Iran like a hopped-up carnival barker at a sideshow, terrified that the bearded lady would end up being more popular than the main tent elephants. The power of Twitter manifested.

But, as Fredricka Whitfield noted Sunday on CNN, "we're getting a lot of information from social networking. At the same time, we're working very hard with our specialists to make sure we verify this information." OK, that's reasonable.

What followed was a specialist, Dubai bureau chief Samson Desta, giving his own eyewitness account of very limited geography street action in Tehran. Which was as separate from verifying the larger Iranian Twitter stream as two siblings meeting for the first time 50 years after their birth; there's a connection, but it ain't profound.

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, parachuting into Tehran for the first time to a slightly warmer welcome that he got on "The Daily Show," wrote lots of front page stories but hardly mentioned the social networking phenomenon. On "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday, Mr. Keller went beyond his own observations. "I'm no expert on Iranian politics," he sad, "but..." and went on to offer his opinion, presumably unscathed by a single tweet. His paper did write a lot about the otherworldly phenomenon of Twitter, but still at arms' length as though it were a strange insect.

The is/isn't discussions aren't useless, but in deifying or demonizing Twitter, they usually miss an opportunity to find the right recipe where all this new stuff and more traditional skills can interact to everyone's benefit (unless you've just stolen an election.)

Look, Twitter can't cure cancer. But it's certainly part of the genetic makeup of a future vaccine to combat the transitional disease affecting professional journalism.

Like any chemical/medical mystery though, it needs some magical combination to unlock the door.

HuffPo's Nico Pitney, live-blogging time line with feeds from Twitter, YouTube, AP, the wires, Web sites, etc., making clear the sourcing in each case, comes close. It's not perfect, but it's more than just show-off aggregation or the kind of gawking and pointing at the new kid that's happened with Twitter in much of more traditional media.

And media consultant/journalist Jeff Jarvis actually cautioned within the body of a Twitter-Iran string that some information had not been confirmed. Jeff, that's a service to an emerging new world reporting order equal to several lectures at CUNY.

Let's first concede that the underlying Iran dynamic isn't new. In China after Tiananmen Square and in the Philippines when I covered the slow-motion fall of Ferdinand Marcos over several years, the Twitter and YouTube precursors were FAXes and smuggled western video cassettes of non-censored news stories from the West. I met more new friends (and enemies) in the outlying jungles of Southern Mindanao holding a wrinkled photocopy of one of my stories than I had San Francisco readers of those same pieces at the old Examiner.

But Twitter, along with a variety of other social media, certainly provides new equipment for tapping into action, scene, and emotion that we ought to be incorporating with journalism's "experts" rather than immunizing ourselves by pointing out what's right or wrong about these vastly expanded sources.

This is how it's been with the media and Twitter over the Iranian upheaval:

• New vs. old battles. See! say the champions of broad digital news collection, you dinosaurs are way too slow and narrow. We're fast and furious and a big fire hose of personal experience. No, no! demurs MSM like CNN. We're evolving. See, we're using Twitter, endlessly on big, fancy new touch screens. We even have whole staffers dedicated to monitoring the stuff. But that's mostly just a lot of pointing, not clicking.
• Voracious debates on almost every forum about the strengths vs. drawbacks of Twitter as a valuable news tool, now that we can't really ignore it. Pro: It's immediate, it's from the source, it evades censorship, and it gives a dramatic and rolling view of motion and emotion. Con: It's also hard to verify, easily accessible to manipulation and disinformation, only gets at emotion and not facts, and reflects disproportionately small number of Iranians, most of whom would have been in the streets -- or not -- without it.

Is Twitter the new and better AP, the future of crowd-sourced news gathering? Wrong question. Is it a flawed electronic bulletin board only momentarily diverted from self-absorbed, shorthand musings into a component of the Iranian counter-revolution? Also wrong question.

The right question is: what are the correct ingredients in addition to Twitter and YouTube, and what is the right recipe for journalists to paint a better picture, give voice to the most number of (real) people affected and vastly expand our old school capabilities as messengers?

I'm the last one to figure that out. But all these tech geniuses with their armies of engineers and array of creative start-ups -- most of them claiming the higher ground desire to do social good -- ought to be able to huddle with those of us who have on-the-ground experience vetting information and weaving the narrative to come up with the real answer.

The whole story depends on it.

Follow Phil Bronstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PhilBronstein

Comments

[CulinaryHatchet]

Quote of the Year!!

"Twitter can't cure cancer. But it's certainly part of the genetic makeup of a future vaccine to combat the transitional disease affecting professional journalism."

Please allow me to borrow it and coin the corollary:

Twitter can't cure cancer. But it's certainly part of the genetic makeup of a future vaccine to combat the transitional disease affecting America's industrialized food system and its effect on our health, the environment, the economy, and workers' rights.

http://www.culinaryhatchet.com/twitter-cant-cure-cancer/

Safefoodinc. and Monsanto: sit up and take notice! (I pick on you because of your anti-Food Inc, web sites.

Culinary Hatchet

www.culinaryhatchet.com
http://twitter.com/CulinaryHatchet
http://culinaryhatchet.ning.com
http://culinaryhatchet.yelp.com

[mommadona]

Herding Cats #207- clap real loud to get attention, then make sure door is open

[lilian101]

"But in actual life, the news gathering nexus of old and new has been stumbling and lost down alleyways of wrong questions and masturbatory debates among journalists and other media specialists."

The masturbatory excesses of journalism rose to new heights when Iraq coverage was limited to condoned news, and slowly filtered to propaganda only all the time no matter what the story.

Twitter is too easy to create, it will be a useful device for misinformatio, disinformation and information control.

[FarOutFish]

During journalism’s “Golden Age”, the end of World War II until the 1970s”, news organizations told the public what they needed to know to participate in the civil discourse necessary for a functioning democracy. Then the consultants came to increase ratings or circulation and revenue by giving the people what they wanted to read and see. Now with the “New Journalism” it’s becoming the “People” giving the “People” what they want.
Just as nations get the government they deserve, they also get the journalism they deserve. We do live in interesting times.

[lilian101]

Which of the 'people'?

[Krishnamurthi Ramachandran]

Journalists are free minded persons.
Because of some rules and regulations by their management­s,governme­nt restrictions-all made news readers,re­porters,TV reporters and other team members have to keep their mouth,their writing skills in within brackets.

[Krishnamurthi Ramachandran]

Whether twitter wants a new person should be top position in Iran.
This is not a question.
Without any second thoughts,Twitter had created a mass awakening in Iran and rest of the world.
It shows ,very quick messages,updated events to twitter users.
AN English adage -A single spark can start a prairie fire.
That is happening in Iran.
After reading from twitter,and all mass media network websites,newspapers columns on this burning issue in Iran had made me to write more comments,my views to all leading websites,including to this website.
All my writings were published.
Now ,people!s reasoning power grows much faster rates than before.

[WilliePilgrim]

Pretty good analysis, though dakong27 posting above makes some excellent observatioins. Twitter is jazzing up, and shaking up, the concept of journalism unlike anything since news was sent across the country by wire using a series of mysterious dots and dashes.
Where it will end-up is subject to a lot of speculation, but it we can atleast hope that the era of capped teeth and meticulous hairdos (or Katie Couric's televised journey to her colon) is a thing of the laughable past and genuine journalism and actual reportage and analysis by experienced and valid voices (not just more rolling eyeballs and snarky remarks..or worse (yes, that's you Steve Ducey) as mostly qualifies today) returns to some position of respectability.

[dakong27]

What is exceptionally irritating in this whole new vs. old media tussle that "respectable" "journalists" are vituperating about is that they still arrogate to themselves the noble role of fact-finder and truth-teller. They are neither. That's why I placed "respectable" and "journalist" in quotes, because what they have become are demagogic spinmeisters. They are not interested in facts or truth, but in ratings or selling newspapers. You could blame Fox News for destroying American journalism, but the truth is when the rest of the profession failed to defend what it does by declaring what O'Reilly does anathema, then it forfeited its identity and any pretense to authority. The good news is that the blogosphere and ordinary, intelligent citizens are stepping in to fill the void. I've read better research and analysis in the blogs in the last 3 years than I have in any newspaper in 15 years, and they're getting better. Twitter is just another tool for citizens to use to do the job "journalists" should have been doing all along.

[gypsy508]

I would strongly disagree. Television aside, newspaper reporters are by and large hard working professionals. I would agree owners have mismanaged newspapers but the best people on the Internet have a journalism background. The rest are far more cheerleaders than any newspaper is.

[jerseywolf]

Wonderful post.