TAKEAWAY: The news breaks on Twitter, that’s a fact, but it takes professional journalists to take it beyond that first Tweet. Nothing wrong with that. Newspapers lost the time advantage , but the media still have the upper hand in terms of making the significance of news explained to readers.
Let the Tweeters break the news……
Twitter breaks the news, no doubt: from the plane landing on the Hudson to the Oslo massacre to the deaths of Bin Laden, Dick Clark and Whitney Houston; Tweets told us about it first
How “Breaking News” Broke the News
Highlight:
Breaking news used to be “news of transcendent importance.” Now it’s a joke.
In a provocative piece titled, How “Breaking News” Broke the News, author David Weigel, starts with the question:
Does “breaking news” have any meaning anymore?
Good question, David, and perhaps we should try to answer by dusting off our bookshelf one of the oldest, if not the first, newswriting textbook, by Lyle Spencer, in which he wrote in 1917:
Any accurate fact that will interest a large number of readers, and, of two stories, the accurate one that interests the greater number of people is the better one.
My own definition for 2012 is something like:
Anything you know now that you did not know 15 minutes ago….or 15 seconds ago
Nobody questions that breaking news has found a comfortable landing station with Twitter, Facebook and other social media.
We all accept that. Everyone armed with a mobile telephone is reporter, videographer and photographer.
He is not a journalist, however.
That function is still with the men and women who train to do the job. And, although they may not break the news in the old fashioned sense of the word, they will help even those reporting it first, to understand how it affects them.
Real journalism goes beyond a 140-character Tweet.
In my view, there is nothing to worry about with the “demise of breaking news” for traditional journalists.
They break the news, you the journalists pick it up and run with it.
Most obstetricians who deliver babies do just that.
They don’t raise them, nurture them and see them grow. Parents do that, in most cases.
Let every “obstetrician” out there who is armed with the tools of reporting take care of the delivery, as I am sure they will continue to do.
Let the journalists do the rest. Their job has not been more crucial.
I don’t lament the end of breaking news. I celebrate the challenge that this presents to editors, journalists and designers: to surprise beyond the House of Twitter.
We must be up to the task.
