Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Guhmshoo — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:58:39 -0000

Humor: Is this what citizen journalism looks like: http://tinyurl.com/4bod3e

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:17:59 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Lionel.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:17:45 -0000

Indeed. Thanks, Sarah.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:17:22 -0000

Thanks, Michelle.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Lionel_Menchaca — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:47:14 -0000

Mathew: Interesting post. I tend to agree with just about everything you wrote here--I think tweeting something and calling it unverified is justified. Like a lot of other folks, I use Twitter and Friendfeed to get an idea of what things are being discussed, and refer to Techmeme several times a day.

I don't expect every blog post or tweet to be true... but it does seem to be a good indicator of news items that tend to get updated pretty quickly if they turn out to be inaccurate.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

turning49 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:56:52 -0000

This is why one should read a newspaper or book on the train.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

leigh — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:24:00 -0000

I'm totally with Cynthia on this one. And just to go one further, different mediums have different dynamics and so too do different services. To expect the same level of due diligence on Twitter where people often come out with gems like "I just ate a sandwich" is just plain silly.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:59:10 -0000

My apologies, Tamera -- I didn't mean to conflate anything, or to give
the impression you were piling on. I was really just trying to give an
idea of the range of responses I got -- all of which I thought were
totally fair comment, by the way.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

sarahintampa — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:53:41 -0000

I also think it was fine to tweet. Twitter is for rumors, gossip, etc. It's not the news. But it can give you the jump on a breaking story if used correctly.

This kind of makes me think of this session I just attended given by Etan Horowitz on “Twitter in Journalism.” When journalists delve into new media, there just aren't any hard lines yet about what's OK and what's not. They're making the rules up as they go along. :)

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Michelle Sullivan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:45:56 -0000

Considering I was probably the first to retweet your Jobs tweet this morning, I'd have to say that the fact that you dedicated 10 characters of your 140 character allocation by typing the word "unverified" in your tweet covers all the bases for me. Long live the water cooler!

I'm just glad I followed that retweep up with a comforting message to my Apple and iPhone buddies encouraging them to take a deep breath ... that everything would be fine. I wouldn't want any heart attacks (no pun intended) on my conscience.

We all know how sensitive those Apple fans can be. ;)

Always a pleasure to read you, Mr Ingram.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

rob tyrie — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:40:44 -0000

Matthew, I think you are a journalist. Your voice, even on twitter, has a responsibility when you use it to report news. When you use it to share what you are having for lunch or to share your personal feelings, well, that not news, its the sharing of a person. For those items, I think you are a person. I think you did the right things today as a journalist and as a person. And I also think that the incident shows the power of rapid sharing of information both on CNN and on Twitter. I suspect Twitter won't change, but iReport on CNN will. Fascinating stuff.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

tamera kremer — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:12:34 -0000

Mathew,

To be fair, I have no idea who Kara is or what her tweets to you were about as I don't follow her on Twitter. My tweet was a direct response to your asking for feedback after the fact and my sharing my opinion. To conflate the two makes it seem as if I was piling on vs. answering something I thought you wanted to get opinions on.

Tamera

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Fraser — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:51:40 -0000

"It’s a process, not a single event."

Best comment that I've read around this event. Wikipedia taught us that quick edits and iteration create fairly accurate content. We don't judge the initial article (now called a stub) to Britannica, but after it goes through the process we generally trust its quality.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Cynthia Brumfield — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:48:31 -0000

This is an utterly silly and self-important debate, in my view. Did anybody who read your initial "Tweet" take it as a piece of journalism and react accordingly? It's not like you were considered to be a citizen journalist posting on a mainstream TV news organization's site.

I've read (and posted) the craziest things on Twitter and I was just assuming that most people use judgment when following the flow of conversation, checking out original sources and conducting an irony check when something is over the line. Unless you're proclaiming that what you tweet is a journalistic effort, I don't see why you have to follow the tenets of the profession on Twitter.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

ianbetteridge — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:31:15 -0000

"it didn’t take long for the rumour to be corrected (and not by a traditional journalist either),"

I think the division between journalists and non-journalists is a false one. As I've argued on a number of occasions, peel away the job title and the paycheck, and what you're left with isn't a role, as such, but a process: the process of building contacts, gathering sources, researching the story, and so on.

So, while it wasn't a "traditional journalist" that debunked the rumour, it was someone using the journalistic process - simply by the tried and trusted method of picking up the phone, and calling someone in full possession of the facts.

The truth of "citizen journalism" is that anyone can *be* a journalist, simply by *doing* journalism. When re-twitttering a rumour, you weren't doing journalism - that doesn't make you any poorer as a journalist, though, because I think you were pretty clear that you weren't putting up a story :)

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

maggiefox — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:29:58 -0000

Great post, Mathew. As I said, Twitter is a conversation, not a newspaper, and the standards are different. Anyone who runs wildly off and acts on a snippet of an unverified Twitter conversation isn't proving anything except that they suffer from poor judgement.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:29:47 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Clare.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:29:16 -0000

Thanks, Tinku -- and I'm glad your impulse was to Google for confirmation :-)

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:28:44 -0000

Thanks, Lynn. I appreciate that.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:28:26 -0000

Thanks, Mark.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:18:05 -0000

Thanks, Jeneane -- I think :-)

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:17:26 -0000

Thanks, Mike. Some people seem to disagree, since I am a professional journalist in my day job -- they would argue that changes the way people read what I post even on something like Twitter.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

Clare — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:15:45 -0000

I wouldn't let it ruin your day.

Twitter is going to become a channel for rumours whether we like it or not and there are going to be a lot of journalists tracking what people say on Twitter and then following it up. OK, so you generally follow people you trust on Twitter but even so just assuming everything on there is going to be the truth is a pretty dangerous path.

I'd say texting something into Twitter in a way that makes it perfectly clear that it is unverified, is an acceptable way of bringing something to your community's attention. There are patterns of rumours and I guess the Steve Jobs one is becoming fairly recognisable, so it might have crossed your mind that this was untrue, but that's more one for your analytical blog post, not your spontaneous expression of surprise.

If you get a whole lot of people saying you're wrong, at least you'll stand corrected (and the likelihood is your mistake will be obvious far quicker than most news sources) but I don't really see that you should be criticised quite so much as a journalist for it, unless your Twitter channel said "This is a news feed. Everything here has been carefully crafted by a professional reporter".

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:15:25 -0000

Thanks, Fraser -- and Adam. My regret with what I posted on Twitter was that on second thought it seemed obvious (as more than one person has pointed out) that the report was dubious at best, and a Digg comment is hardly a great source either :-) But I am still fine with the concept in theory.

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

mathewi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:11:25 -0000

That's a great point, banane -- I hope that is happening.