The Future of Journalism

Okay, I think that there needs to be some new rules that dictate to public figures that just because you have a twitter/facebook does not mean that you should "dumb down" your speech. I am appalled that it has become socially acceptable (or appears to have become) for politicians to write that way online. I have an example from Sarah Palin's official twitter.

"Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl change" **

http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/6823906156

That is her exact tweet. I have not altered, changed, or edited anything from the original tweet.

Since when is it acceptable to write this way? For those of you who will argue against me and say that it's "easier" or "Twitter's 140-character limit makes it difficult," that should not matter. Either shorten your tweet to 140 characters OR make multiple tweets. She could have made two separate tweets and got the message across.

Who is the target audience here? I had my 60-year-old father read this tweet. He struggled to read it out loud, and he was very frustrated while trying to understand what she was trying to say. If the target audience for her twitter are other adults, then she may have a problem. I asked some of my friends (college-aged) to read the tweet, and most of them also struggled.

I think that writing in such a way does not promote literacy or clarity. I don't think that as a politician, on her public (not personal/private), Twitter, she should be writing in a way that misrepresents her intelligence.

I think that it seems rushed and careless. I don't even make my Twitter that way, and my Twitter is a personal "request only" account.

I have done research and noticed that I am not the only one to give criticism to Sarah Palin. Other criticism includes

"TWITTER ACCOUNT OF A 9 YEAR OLD"

I am not intentionally attacking or "dissing" Sarah Palin for the way she uses her Twitter. I am simply using her as an example of what I have seen on Twitter that I believe is not acceptable. I do not think I am alone in my opinion. I jokingly said to my aunt in an e-mail, "She puts the TWIT in TWITTER," and that is what inspired this blog entry.

Thanks for reading, cheers.

One last note regarding Twitter: My twitter is http://www.twitter.com/nikkyraney , I follow those who follow me, and I believe it is good to be following more people than are following you (unless you are a big time celebrity without the time for all that), because I think via Twitter LISTENING is more important than being heard. Twitter helps me gain information from others and I use it to mostly post articles & news related information. I like to follow a variety of people, and I think the more people you follow, the more information you can obtain. Twitter is extremely simplistic, but used in the proper way it can be a great tool for promotion and for news.

**does she mean EONS?

"Here's a little newsflash for those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve this great country." - Sarah Palin

I have attached the video from youtube.com. I personally watched it via CNN, but it really doesn't make a difference.

Obama's State of the Union Address, in my opinion, was very well done. I try as a journalist not to exert my personal opinion, but since this is my blog I figure I can get away with it once in a while. I appreciated what he had to say about college students and that getting an education should not lead to poverty.

I acquired the transcript via abcnews.com so that I could quote him accurately. The part that stood out the most to me was:

Now, as for the analysis from other news sources:

I watched CNN right afterwards and they had their team of "senior political analyzers" go over every line that Obama spoke and show how the Democrats, Independents, and Republicans were "impacted" by each word/line spoken.

Newspapers did some news analysis through their print versions, but I notice that most of the analysis was done online. I think that this is because news outlets are able to deliver their information right after the President gave his speech, and the news outlets were also able to include the video footage from the State of the Union.

I would like to say that in the future journalism will go back to treating accuracy and objectivity as the two biggest deals when publishing an article, but that may be too idealistic. In my opinion, the analysis of the President's speech was particularly bias, and I feel like each reporter/anchor/writer inserted his/her own personal opinion when "reporting" about the speech.

I do not want to attack particular news sources, but in a lot of my findings the articles about the President's address were put under "news" "news analysis" to show that it would be hard news and objective, but the result was personal opinions inserted, as well as first person references.

I truly hope that the future of journalism will return to objectivity, because people that decide to read about the speech online without watching it themselves may blindly follow the opinion and "facts" given about the speech on the news website without actually getting their own opinions since none of the sites are able to objectively analyze his speech.