Is Twitter The New Walter Cronkite?

by Glynnis MacNicol | 11:16 am, November 30th, 2009

» 8 comments

98634_remembering-walter-cronkite-1916-2009 Twitter has been declared the most popular word of 2009 meaning, I presume, that in less than 12 months the act of Twittering has gone so mainstream that even your parents probably know what you’re talking about.

It also means, I suppose, that this is how a whole lot of people are getting their breaking news these days — from the collective voice of God, as it were. The last time the nation got its breaking news from one person is arguably when news legend Walter Cronkite was manning the CBS News desk (and yes I know there were other network new anchors at the time, but can you name any of them?). So perhaps it’s not a surprise that TechCrunch saw fit to draw a direct comparison between the two.

The difference is that had the Kennedy assassination happened today, it would not have taken 38 minutes from the time of President Kennedy being declared dead to the time Cronkite broke the news on the air. Actually, it may have. But it would have been reported on services like Twitter much sooner. Had it played out that way, where do you think people would turn the next time there was an event unfolding in realtime?…That said, there is no denying that right now, Twitter, the brand, is the winning channel for this new type of news consumption. It’s the Walter Cronkite for realtime information. And when the next major event happens, an increasing number of us will be huddled around our computer screens, watching.

This has been true for media junkies for a while now — I was somewhat floored in Sept to read about Patrick Swayze’s death on the NYT.com homepage before seeing it on Twitter — but one imagines it won’t be long before the nation gets accustomed to getting its breaking news in 140 characters or less. That said “that’s the way it is” would make for a great hashtag.

CBS News, Mashable, TechCrunch, The State of Journalism, twitter, Walter Cronkite

DWHarper

Twitter will be dead in a year. Ultimately, Twitter will be made up of tweeters and followers and eventually the followers will not care what the tweeters do. Tweeters will be celebrities and the followers will grow tired of their mindless 140 character drivel.
ImNotBlue

DWHarper says:
November 30, 2009 at 11:25 am

Let’s see if I can Twitter:
“DWHarper, still has not apologized for his statement about Hannity. I wonder if he/she thinks I’ll forget.”

*PHEW*… made it under the limit.
JJHunsecker

@ImNotBlue: Don’t know whether you can Twitter. You can’t punctuate. Lose the comma following DWHarper. Also, consult Strunk & White. Or continue to be subliterate. Your choice.
Rachel Sklar

Here’s the short answer: No. Cronkite had credibility because if he said it, it was right. Twitter has credibility only in seeing things from many trusted sources, at the same time – if you see something on Twitter and it’s not backed up elsewhere, you don’t *quite* believe it 100%. Cronkite, there was never a doubt. This doesn’t mean that Twitter isn’t trustworthy as a platform, or used by trustworthy individuals, it just means as a whole it is not vetted the way the news that got to Cronkite was vetted. Therein lies the difference. It’s just an extra layer of caution when dealing with Twitter, which is fine – we can all stand to be a little less complacent about the news we get and who delivers it.
em

Twitter will be around for a long time !!! It’s awesome !
ImNotBlue

JJHunsecker says:
November 30, 2009 at 12:34 pm

So that’s what it’s come to? Complaining about an over use of commas. Really?

I type like I speak… perhaps not proper formatting style, but I believe it conveys a more accurate portrayal of my speech patterns. For example:

“JJHunsecker (pause), needs to find a better use of his or her time. Critiquing comments for punctuation on an online blog, (pause) is both pathetic (louder to hold attention) AND (look around room) a sign that he or she can’t add anything substantive to the conversation. Perhaps JJHunsecker (pause for effect), needs a better hobby.”

But hey, thanks for posting.

(PS- Anyone else notice the similarities between DWHarper, and JJHunsecker? I wonder if it’s a conisidence that both their IDs start with two initials, and then some form of last-name. DW, if you’re going to waste time creating another name, you might as well just apologise. It would take less time and effort.)
peterfeld

Lol, no. Here’s a brief lesson in how to create something out of nothing,

1) Declare that something is the “most popular word” in a press release designed to publicize your brand. “Popular” among who? Based on what? Apparently, media mentions.

2) Ignore the fact that these media mentions are skewed because journalists are obsessed with Twitter (since it guarantees them a personal audience that decades of bylined stories could never attain), and therefore can’t go 15 minutes without filing another story about the “new phenomenon of 2009″ (or was it 2008? Or 2006?) Of course, that also means those same journalists will rush to pick up on your press release.

3) Count on writers and readers to fail to differentiate between something that is “most popular” (meaning, simply, that it exceeds any other item on a set list — i.e., in a sufficiently fragmented landscape you can be “most popular” with 2%, or 0.2%), and something that is genuinely widespread. (See also: “trending topics.”)

Twitter is becoming well-known as the world’s Number 1 source of real-time misinformation (see “Woods, Tiger”) so I don’t expect it will supplant Walter Cronkite (or “Kronkite,” according to Trending Topics) anytime this lifetime, despite the best efforts of its Kool-Aid Brigade. Any evidence that the nation is getting used to receiving its breaking news that way (as if) would need to be measured the old-fashioned way: through random sampling and reliable market research survey data, not by being filtered through the Twitter cult’s echo chamber.
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

The only way Twitter could’ve reported Kennedy’s death before Cronkite would’ve been if someone in the operating room had tweeted, or if a correspondent felt it more important for them to tweet first in support of their personal brand, rather than notify their news desk and online editors to accomplish their job.

Still, even if some print reporter texted his editor and if it took them all of five minutes to get something on the web, if he had tweeted in the interime instead of drafting or dictating the story, it would probably take more than five minutes for news to go much further than that individual reporter’s followers.

Television and the web are immediate. They don’t discriminate based on who you e-know and they’re the ones paying the reporters, so on a story of such significance, if they were to report it before the story was posted or broadcast, you’d think that would be a firing offense.