Miami Herald columnist and journalism professor Edward Wasserman has a new piece up today exploring The Dangers of Twitter. But: dangers not to Interpersonal Contact or The Written Word or what have you…but, rather, to newsgathering.
“Technologies never brag about what they don’t do; they’re too busy wowing us with their tricks to admit to their failings,” Wasserman writes. “New media technologies trade on the promise that they truly put you in touch, that they have the power to break the bubble of separateness that the journalist struggles within.”
The danger, however, “is that Twitter will keep reporters off the streets and in front of their screens, that it will further skew journalism toward seeking out, listening to and serving the young, the hip, the technically sophisticated, the well-off – in short, the better-connected.”
Indeed. Whether you’re Twitterphilic or Twitterphobic (or anti-Twitter or Twitter-agnostic or what have you), Wasserman’s piece is well worth a read.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.