As the lines between traditional and new media continue to blur, I've noticed that news outlets have begun getting story tips from Twitter. They have even taken to quoting Twitter posts in their articles.
I saw two such occurrences earlier this week. On Monday morning, stories started flooding the internet revolving around a series of Twitter updates posted on Sunday night by band members from pop-punk bands We the Kings and Forever the Sickest Kids. While loading their van after a performance in Philadelphia at the Theatre of Living Arts, police confronted the bands and, according to the tweets, started beating and harassing them.
Alternative Press, a magazine based out of Cleveland, Ohio, reported the incident the next day, using quotes from the band members' personal Twitters. Other news outlets picked up the story, though I saw none who actually spoke to a band member or police representative.
The second instance also happened on Sunday, when Joel Madden, the lead singer of punk band Good Charlotte and boyfriend of Nicole Richie, was forced to cover his tattoos before boarding a flight with British Airways. He tweeted during and after the experience, and his story was picked up by news outlets from America to Australia.
Not only did the reporters not speak to Madden directly, but he later blogged about the incident, saying that there was nothing newsworthy to the story, and no reason for it to even be reported.
So the question presents itself: Is using social media sources lazy or innovative? I personally think it's lazy. If I were an editor at a news outlet, I would encourage my reporters to use social media for ideas and leads, but I would not allow a story to be comprised of Twitter quotes.
I've noticed a lot of reporters starting to become dependent on social media to cite their stories, but I hadn't heard much about it. A quick Google search told me that I clearly hadn't been paying attention, because this is a widely discussed topic.
There are those who say that social media is destroying the traditional media; but is it possibly reporters’ own fault? In a world where reporters use tweets as quotes and Twitterers as sources, I say that those reporters are to blame if the audience chooses to forego his reporting and just read the tweets on their own. Newspapers and magazines should go out and get quotes and ideas that the average person doesn't have access to.
I've always been a firm believer in the idea that, while news print may die, newspapers will live on through the internet. This will not be the case, however, if reporters allow themselves to be overtaken by social media. Getting a lead or an idea from Twitter is fine, but back it up with additional sources and research, don't just reiterate what was already available in readers' Twitterfeeds.
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