Is Twitter lazy and narcissistic or a new editorial product?

Posted by Helena Deards on March 13, 2009 at 3:34 PM

Twitter is "mindcasting", not "lifecasting" according to David Sarno of the LA Times, and that's why he says that the critics who have labelled it the "newest form of digital narcissism" are wrong. Mindcasting is the term that Jay Rosen came up with, when making the distinction between "what I ate for breakfast" type blogs and his Twitter feed, which he says is "editing the Web for me in real time". Rosen is such an advocate of the new media phenomenon that he says he "could work on the concept of a Twitter feed as an editorial product of my own." Sarno reasons that this "simple service is powering a new economy of info-sharing and connectivity", which by its public and interactive nature "takes the concept of social networking and blows the doors off it".

Also responding to Twitter criticisms is Kate Day of the Telegraph, who muses over the role of Twitter in journalism - and wonders if it is simply lazy. After listening to Hector Sants of the UK's Financial Services Authority speak about the financial crisis, she was struck by the "subdued atmosphere amongst the experts and financial journalists in the room". This was in sharp contrast to the lively debate which was going on outside the room, with bloggers covering the event live, and questions from Twitter users being fed in to the discussion by a Reuters journalist.

Day asks herself if this is lazy journalism; journalists asking questions thought up by other people. She comes to a more balanced conclusion than Sarno; Twitter isn't lazy journalism, its "different journalism". Sarno points out that "if Twitter was nothing but a way for the masses to meaninglessly interrupt each other, it wouldn't have attracted the deafening media buzz in the first place". A valid point, and representative of the role that Twitter has found in the daily routines of many journalists who have harnessed it as a way to find stories and gauge opinions. Although referring specifically to financial journalism, Day's conclusion seems balanced and widely applicable, "Specialists who can probe the depths of our financial systems will always be valuable and will offer something that most people cannot. But surely events like this one also show that far from being lazy, a more open media could be crucial."

Source: LA Times, Telegraph