This link has been bookmarked by 17 people . It was first bookmarked on 27 Jul 2009, by Melissa Moore.
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Perhaps a news article really can be crafted, haikulike, in 140 characters.
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Melissa Hart is an adjunct instructor of journalism at the University of Oregon
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devoid of
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To those who Twitter, the reporter who investigates a story before offering it to the public must also seem tediously ruminant. On Twitter, the notes become the story, devoid of even five minutes of reflection on the writer's way to the computer. I can see that there are times —an airplane landing in the Hudson, a presidential election in Iran—when this type of impromptu journalism becomes a necessity, and an exciting one at that. Luckily, reporters still exist to make sense of information bytes and expand upon them for readers—but for how much longer?
I worry that microblogging cheats my students out of their trump card: a mindful attention to the subject in front of them, so that they can capture its sights and sounds, its smells and tactile qualities, to share with readers. How can Twittering stories from laptops and phones possibly replace the attentive journalist who tucks a digital recorder artfully under a notepad, pencil behind one ear, and gives full attention to the subject at hand?
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I went home after the lecture and—hypocritically, I admit—updated my Facebook status and my blog to declare how much I despise Twitter.
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laughable name that itself suggests foolishness
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I offer no defense of Twitter, but Twitter is only a sign of the 30-second attention span crafted by broadcast television in the past 30 years. If viewers can't 'get it' in 30 seconds, most just tune out. It's sad, but Walter Cronkite could probably not get a job today. And I thoroughly enjoy a well-researched investigative piece. Give me 10,000 well-written words any day.
Unfortunately, the majority of 'news' reporting that people consume today is little more than a nationally-televised Tweet. Flip to (insert news channel acronym here) and it's all infotainment. Far too many (biased) talking heads ensuring that 'all sides' of a news item are covered. I'm not excluding any of them: they all pander to popular culture to maintain ratings. Not report the news.
And print? It's dead. Let it go. The financial and environmental costs to produce a print newspaper with a one-day lifespan are far too great: from harvesting/recycling to delivery. Nasty and unprofitable and by the time it's delivered it's out of date. If a news reporter wants to keep his or her job she should adjust to the new content-delivery format and start tweeting. Or start on that novel...
We can bemoan it all we want, but we have exactly the news consumer we produced. - 7 more annotations...
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Gary Ritzenthaler"To those who Twitter, the reporter who investigates a story before offering it to the public must also seem tediously ruminant. On Twitter, the notes become the story, devoid of even five minutes of reflection on the writer's way to the computer. I can see that there are times —an airplane landing in the Hudson, a presidential election in Iran—when this type of impromptu journalism becomes a necessity, and an exciting one at that. Luckily, reporters still exist to make sense of information bytes and expand upon them for readers—but for how much longer?"
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Yu-Hui Chingnd suggested that those students not particula
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