The media hay-day over Twitter's use as a journalistic force for the Iranian Presidential Election has unearthed some deep issues traditional media has with new/social media - and I am having a great time watching the debate unfurl. Since the explosion of traditional media coverage of the Twitter-journalism surrounding the Iran Election, many in old media have reasonably questioned the idea of Twitter as a crowd-sourced journalistic effort. Traditional media have raised good questions such as: How can readers be certain that what they are reading on Twitter is accurate information? Who are going to be the fact-checkers in a social media driven world? Isn't classic journalistic training essential to being a journalist?
This debate did not start with the Iranian Election, but the buzz surrounding the #iranelection coverage on Twitter has brought this debate to the forefront. For the past decade traditional media has seen the writing on the wall. Internet news is challenging the previously unchallenged business model of old media and instead of changing their business model and evolving into news organizations of the 21st century, old media has sit back and chosen to criticize the new media they do not fully comprehend.
Last week, Sayfie Media President and CEO, Justin Sayfie, discussed these issues with a professor of history and journalism. What transpired was a fascinating debate on what constitutes journalism and why, as Sayfie points out, Twitter is a source of legitimate, news-worthy, crowd-sourced journalism.
Just last week, Compete, a well-respected web-analytics company did some analysis on where people were going on the web to search for information on 'Iran+Election'. The results may surprise you. Internet users did not go to the New York Times, Wikipedia, Google News or even beloved Google - they went to Twitter. At a time when the world was desperate for accurate real-time news, people turned to Twitter's crowd-sourced journalism.
These astonishing numbers should cause us all to take a step back and realize what is happening before our very eyes to journalism. News consumers are trusting crowd-sourced journalism to provide them with the news they want because they believe in the idea of a truly free-market journalism system where trusted news sources rise to the top naturally. Social media is bringing about the true democratization of news.
Journalists are no longer confined to the daily newspapers with out of date business models and huge overhead costs. And while I still believe there will be a need and a desire for classically trained journalists, the fact of the matter is that journalists are on every street corner and on every cell phone ready to report at a moments notice. The Citizen Powered News Bureau has been born.
This debate did not start with the Iranian Election, but the buzz surrounding the #iranelection coverage on Twitter has brought this debate to the forefront. For the past decade traditional media has seen the writing on the wall. Internet news is challenging the previously unchallenged business model of old media and instead of changing their business model and evolving into news organizations of the 21st century, old media has sit back and chosen to criticize the new media they do not fully comprehend.
Last week, Sayfie Media President and CEO, Justin Sayfie, discussed these issues with a professor of history and journalism. What transpired was a fascinating debate on what constitutes journalism and why, as Sayfie points out, Twitter is a source of legitimate, news-worthy, crowd-sourced journalism.
Just last week, Compete, a well-respected web-analytics company did some analysis on where people were going on the web to search for information on 'Iran+Election'. The results may surprise you. Internet users did not go to the New York Times, Wikipedia, Google News or even beloved Google - they went to Twitter. At a time when the world was desperate for accurate real-time news, people turned to Twitter's crowd-sourced journalism.
These astonishing numbers should cause us all to take a step back and realize what is happening before our very eyes to journalism. News consumers are trusting crowd-sourced journalism to provide them with the news they want because they believe in the idea of a truly free-market journalism system where trusted news sources rise to the top naturally. Social media is bringing about the true democratization of news.Journalists are no longer confined to the daily newspapers with out of date business models and huge overhead costs. And while I still believe there will be a need and a desire for classically trained journalists, the fact of the matter is that journalists are on every street corner and on every cell phone ready to report at a moments notice. The Citizen Powered News Bureau has been born.
