Common Sense Journalism: Tweets and a news ’story’ – stop confounding the two
Doug Fisher illustrates once again why his blog has ‘common sense’ in the title in his reaction to an essay by journalism instructor Melissa Hart on ‘The Trouble with Twitter’.
Journalists need to know when a story is a story; when a tweet is a tweet; and when presenting the factual expositions of a news item is enough, he writes.
Using the right tools for the job is a persisting hang-up in the industry that needs to be overcome:
“Why do we have so much trouble getting our heads around the idea that you use the best tool for the job you need to do? If you want a hole, use a drill, not a screwdriver. Other businesses get it. Why do journalists continue to cling to the idea that all they have is a screwdriver? The problem with that, of course, to continue the metaphor, is that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Thus, to too many journalists, everything has to look like a ’story’, instead of acknowledging that much of what they do is not story but factual exposition, and maybe if they stripped those factual expositions down, they’d actually have time to do stories…”
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Working in journalism and want to boost your digital skills? Questions about starting a news business online that you've been too afraid to ask?
August 12th, 2009 at 10:54 am
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