Guest post: I am Sir Lancelot and with my Twitter sword I’ll defend journalism’s honour
In this guest posting, ZDNet’s Renai LeMay argues that Twitter is journalism’s new sword, and he’s the man to wield it.
In my daily professional life, I often feel as though I am a medieval knight who has been called into action to defend with sword and shield the honour of a great lady of noble birth.
That lady’s name, of course, is Journalism.
Now, there is no doubt that she is currently beset on all sides.
Her bountiful wealth of gold and silver is speedily disappearing as digital mediums demolish her traditional revenue models. Her social media rivals for our attention grow ever more beautiful as time goes on. And of course her virtue is beset by public relations professionals, whose numbers are legion.
And yet, I take solace from the fact that she has chosen the right champion.
I am not one of the traditional defenders of journalism.
I am not a 60-something newspaper editor who cannot understand the internet. I am not the chief executive of a television studio who is suing YouTube for re-publishing his TV news clips. And I am not a media magnate with a sprawling publishing empire that needs to keep his share price up by talking up his print assets.
I am only 28 years old and I am a member of Generation Y. I have an iPhone, a MacBook, Facebook and Twitter accounts, a blog, an Xbox and a Nintendo Wii. I know what re-tweeting is and how to do it, and I am the perpetrator of many a rickroll.
As a journalist, I have been publishing professional articles on the internet for the past 10 years and am currently the news editor of ZDNet.com.au, a website which is Australia’s largest business technology publication.
In short … I am Sir Lancelot. And I and many others like me represent the future of journalism. The media industry is entering the age where Generation Y becomes management.
With this in mind, you may well ask, what is my opinion of Twitter’s impact on the media and journalism?
Firstly, Twitter is not “the death of the traditional journalist” and it does not represent a “threat” to the media. Twitter is a “playground of pleasure” for journalists and represents a fantastic opportunity to the media.
There is one simple reason why.
Twitter represents a way for journalists to get back to their grassroots history and connect with readers and audiences in the most personal way.
There is no doubt that our society’s journalism has stagnated over the past 20 years. In the 1970’s, the lady we call journalism was holding clandestine meetings in parking garages with Deep Throat to expose presidential corruption.
Thirty years later, she’s become a depressed, old and chain-smoking has-been. We know this because university studies have exposed the fact that much of what we call journalism today is in fact composed of press release re-writes.
No wonder Generation Y spends more time on Facebook than reading the Washington Post … or even the Huffington Post. Journalism has dropped the ball. But Twitter represents a way to put that diamond tiara back on journalism’s head.
Every day now, I see Australians using Twitter to connect directly with journalists that they previously had little or no access to. Every day now, I see journalists using Twitter to connect directly with readers and audiences they previously had little or no access to.
This is because Twitter is the greatest tool humanity has yet discovered for facilitating relationships between people who have never met, yet have a common interest.
The only currency it recognises is valuable information.
When journalists succeed in delivering valuable information, Twitterers reward them through recognition, increased distribution and by trusting us with confidential information that will lead to more articles. When journalists make mistakes or simply don’t do a good enough job, Twitterers curse us, demand that we do better and threaten to read the news somewhere else.
In short, Twitter is cutting the fat out of journalism.
The starkest example of this impact that I have personally seen came when, in the closing months of 2008, Australia’s IT industry went through a massive round of layoffs in reaction to the global financial crisis.
Twitter went crazy.
The first thing that I witnessed was an amazement on the part of Twitterers that the media was not investigating the redundancies with the rigour we should have been. This was a righteous anger. Isn’t it “our media”? Shouldn’t they be covering the fact that I and hundreds of others in my company have lost their jobs?
They were right.
So ZDNet.com.au swung into action. Stimulated by our readers and our newfound relationship with them via Twitter, we started investigating the cuts in the IT industry.
After the first few articles went up, we experienced a snowball effect. We started getting dozens of tips through Twitter direct messages about layoffs. We wrote dozens of stories about them. We did what the media is supposed to do; provide an information service to its readers, despite the disapproval of powerful people.
We published information that only an independent press can publish. Information that would end careers if published by those who leaked it to us. Information that demonstrated the value of journalism to society. This ‘snowball’ effect we saw during that period was in fact a strong example of the relationship between journalists and their audiences being renewed in an amazingly positive way; and much of it was done through Twitter.
And we’ve seen that snowball effect happen again and again and again since that time. Journalists being driven by the needs of their readers rather than commercial agendas.
Now you might think that all this is pretty amazing. But here’s the really mind-blowing thing.
You can take that principle of community engagement through Twitter and apply it to any issue or event, no matter how small. Audiences and journalists can and are using Twitter to work together on coverage of issues as large as national politics. But they are also using this snowball effect to build community and coverage of events as small as an under 7’s soccer game.
Any niche coverage is valuable as long as there is an audience interested in it. This sort of reporting is what many in the media industry are calling “hyperlocal journalism”.
Over the next few years you’ll hear arguments that social media can replace traditional media. And there is no doubt that in some ways it can. Twitter as a platform is currently doing a stellar job of covering the situation in Iran: a situation that traditional journalists face political challenges in reporting on.
Over time, you will see the principle of citizen reporting being used in Iran being applied to every situation in life; whether it be as big as an election or as small as a primary school soccer game.
But this won’t negate the need for professional journalists to work with the community to publish and investigate information that nobody else can. The reality is Twitter and journalists need to work together. Many of the best journalists already know this and are getting on the Twitter bandwagon. Others will fall by the wayside as they ignore the wave of the future.
Now the time has come for me to get back to work and return to King Arthur’s round table.
But I want to leave you with one thought: Twitter is not the great evil for journalists and media. In fact it is a playground of pleasure that is helping to renew journalism and bring that great lady back to her rightful throne.
Renai LeMay is the news editor of ZDnet.com.au. These opinions are his own, and not necessarily those of his employer, CBS Interactive, who Mumbrella suspects does not actually think of him as Sir Lancelot. He twitters at @renailemay.
This piece is the modified text of a speech given to the Insight Exchange’s Twitter’s Impact on Media & Journalism event earlier this week.
A most excellent piece and one of the most cogent views I have heard a journalist express on this whole issue.
User ID not verified.
Wow. First. Thanks, Twitter!!! 🙂
User ID not verified.
Indeed – very interesting viewpoint. Wish more journalists in the Middle East would embrace Twitter
User ID not verified.
methinks you spendeth a little too much time with that ‘sword’ my Twitter lord …
User ID not verified.
Lancelot with his diddling destroyed Camelot.
User ID not verified.
Yes, yes Renai. Let me see if I can sum up your opening remarks:
“There’s been no journalistic triumphs since Watergate and I’m going to fix all that with my self-promoting yet hard-hitting twitter feed at 140 characters at a time”
And just how the f*#k was a twitter feed going to help Carl Bernstein? Was he going to sit on his twitter feed all night waiting for some guys to admit that they’d broken into the Democrat headquarters? Or Perhaps just keep an eye on Mark Felt’s twitter feed waiting for him to spill his guts?
Arrogant and absurd.
User ID not verified.
Great post Renai! Well-considered and insightful.
Is it just me or is Sir Galahad’s ‘summary’ a little simplistic and more than a little toxic? I just googled him and apparently he’s Sir Lancelot’s illegitimate son…
User ID not verified.
What a load of wank. He may be 28 and he may have is iPhone and work on ZDNet but who takes notice of ZDNet and what great stories has Twitter been responsible for in Australia.
Give me good old fashioned journalism any day.
At the end of the day great journalism is not about comment it is about facts and journalists having the contacts to firstly establish the facts and then publish them without being sued.
A classic example is the fake email affair now gripping Canberra.
I am waiting for the day when someone sues a Twitter writer as it will be an interesting event to follow.
I wonder how Renai LeMay would go writing a Painters & Dockers series or standing up to politicians with facts that force their resignation.
I don’t know of one great story in Australia that is down to “Twitter” comment.
User ID not verified.
Hi Sir Galihad (by the way, a bit of journalistic spell checking wouldn’t have gone amiss on that name), thanks for your comments.
I’m not sure I see the part where Renai argues that Twitter replaces all journalism that went before.
But I suspect that there are political journalists right now building relationships via Twitter with politicians and civil servants. Through those relationships they become sources, that, you never know, may one day involve standing in the shadwos in multi-storey carparks being pointed in the right direction.
And just for accuracy, Woodward and Bernstein’s focus was on the cover-up, not the break-in.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
A confidential tip off about the effects of the global financial crisis – LOL.
I agree that Twitter provides a feedback loop just like comments sections, email and good old conversations.
User ID not verified.
Tim,
Looks like we both fell down on the spelling issue. (I found various spellings).
And Bernstein still wasn’t going to conduct a relationship with his deep throat on twitter And the relationships that really matter aren’t going to happen on a highly public internet forum.
If you want to take all those arguments to their logical extent then it’s not twitter that is the enabler it’s just the bloody internet. The same relationships “could” form in a billion other internet platforms. But to declare yourself a Lancelot brandishing your mighty twitter sword and running down the last 20 years of journalism and making sweeping statements like twitter is “playground of pleasure that is helping to renew journalism and bring that great lady back to her rightful throne” is just arrogant.
How on earth does twitter help reporters going into Northern Pakistan? Or some poor cadet who has to go to a car accident and talk to a grieving mother.
It’s just so arrogant. It almost insults those who have really done the hard yards and risked themselves for this “great lady” who some 28 yo IT reporter has declared has fallen from her throne.
Get the F*#K real.
User ID not verified.
If ever there was proof needed that stopping some people writing more than 140 characters at a time was indeed a good thing…
User ID not verified.
Pure comment gold! You Iron Chef Dairy just won the internet
User ID not verified.
give Sir Galahad his own column. please.
User ID not verified.
If ever there was proof that some people needed to write more than 140 characters, not to mention include a little punctuation, Iron Chef Dairy is a good candidate.
Who on earth is your comment directed at?
marklen, is ICD your boss?
User ID not verified.
I think the way he uses the first person to reinforce his pitch really adds value for the client.
User ID not verified.
@DWR: I don’t think you should be preaching about ‘good old fashioned journalism’ when you were the one busted by Media Watch for plagiarizing other people’s work, under your own byline, and then blaming it on some rogue ‘phantom hacker’ when you got caught (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdtvJAKEHeU).
I agree with you that “At the end of the day great journalism is not about comment it is about facts” but it’s even better when they are your own facts and research and stories, not ones you’ve ripped off from hundreds of other journalists.
User ID not verified.
C’mon baby, tell me about how big and strong that sword of yours is.
User ID not verified.
Gag, what a pompous loser
User ID not verified.
Can I just say – “way to go Jack” – we all know that if Renai is journalism’s knight in shining amour…DWR is her rapist…
User ID not verified.
Thanks for the read. I enjoyed your take on it.
Don’t let the a’holes get you down.
User ID not verified.
My god. Who listens to DWR anyway?
User ID not verified.
Flattered that someone would use my name to post a comment (#22), but I know I certainly don’t have any proof to back up any of those allegations (and hopefully, my spelling isn’t quite that atrocious). 🙂 Or could it be the Phantom Hacker?
User ID not verified.
You’re right, Renai, you’re not a 60-something newspaper editor who cannot understand the internet or a chief executive of a television studio who is suing YouTube for re-publishing his TV news clips. But what you *are* is a bit of an egomaniac with a reputation in journalism circles for having a very, very high opinion of yourself as if putting words on paper, or into pixels, makes you smarter than the average person. And buddy… it doesn’t. I can’t believe you actually presented this to people with a straight face. Did anyone laugh out loud?
User ID not verified.
Hmm, since when was tech journalism the last bastion of real journalism?
If “your writer” (as I believe you used to call yourself on your blog) was out there breaking stories about politicians stealing from the people who pay their wages or if you were uncovering deep and dark secrets about companies polluting the land etc then I would applaud your stance – but you write about tech and you are one of the most egotistical journalists I have ever met.
Your reputation in the journalism and pr ciclres isn’t that great because of your ego, your aloof nature and your ability to think you hold some great place in the world..
Twitter isn’t the death of journalism, the death of journalism will come from people believing they are more important than the stories they are writing.
User ID not verified.
Hey DWR. I’m not one to go off on a tangent (much) but a few days ago you said:
> At the end of the day great journalism is not about comment it is about facts and > journalists having the contacts to firstly establish the facts and then publish them > without being sued.
> A classic example is the fake email affair now gripping Canberra.
Where was the great journalism? Wasn’t the Daily Telegraph journalist duped?
Twitter doesn’t mean the death of traditional reporting but it may be a useful information channel.
The blurring of the lines between “facts” (always a tricky term) and interpretive opinions and refusal to admit fault in only the most extreme cases might be where traditional media started down a slippery slope, no? Just saying…
User ID not verified.
Hmmm, sounds like Renai has pissed off a few PR types. Guess that means he’s doing his job.
Using Twitter, Facebook, his iPhone and blog to communicate and build connections doesn’t make Renai some sort of uber-geek that doesn’t follow the principals of so-called “old-fashioned journalism”
He’s just using whatever mediums are available to him to keep the bastards honest, which is after all what it’s all about. The DM capability of Twitter is just another way for sources to leak information. Let’s not confuse the medium with the message.
The only thing unique about Twitter is that it can add transparency to the conversation between journalists and their sources, businesses and their customers, and anything that adds transparency is good for journalism IMHO
User ID not verified.
Interesting to see that Gen Y gender politics are pretty similar to boomers, but that apart, Twitter’s more likely to pork-sword journalists galloping around on the Internet wearing their iPhone armour than rescue anything.
Of course, it takes a few years of experience and making some painful mistakes to learn that, and not just applying vaseline to head to make it fit through the office doors in the mornings.
User ID not verified.
Well, Sir Lancelot, what a twit you are. I’m one of the ‘old’ journos who just happens to have won a couple of Walkleys along the way, designed and edited my first website 15 years ago, have run a dozen since. But, hey, what would I know. Investigative reporting – who needs it!; skill in interviewing – who needs it!; sub-editing, grammar, article construction – who needs them!. All we need is Twitter, right, and you and the new generation of journalists – most of whom seem to be deserting you on this issue – will ride gloriously into an ever brightening future.
Like another correspondent, I am amazed you actually said all this in public.
Sadly, it is this kind of thinking that is killing off real journalism. You – and your naive thoughts – are just another very small – but serious – knife in its back. Grow up.
User ID not verified.
I can’t see that a Twitter sword would be very effective at only 140 characters long.
User ID not verified.