a thought on twitter vs journalism

So I was having a quick scan through the age (my most hated of online newspapers - namely due to the video ads that keep crashing my firefox - not to mention the redunancy of video ads on an online newspaper...)

And there was this blog post

Which wasn't really anything exciting I guess - hell I knew about the earthquake through twitter as well and I also follow 774Melbourne for my real news. There's a certain comfort in the ABC for us Aussies I think...

But the bit that got me was this particular quote:

Twitter was useful on Friday night, but I'm not one of those people who says Twitter and other user-generated channels are a substitute for the mainstream media. Few people would go to see a Citizen Doctor, or get on a plane with a Citizen Pilot, yet some seem to think a Citizen Journalist is just as good as a trained journalist. Even if I didn't have the conflict of interest of being a trained journalist, I still wouldn't trust Twitter or Facebook as my primary sources of information.

Well of course he wouldn't - he's employed by fairfax media (duh!). It never ceases to amaze me how negative the traditional media can be towards new media, especially when the people making the comments try to come across as being objective.

I'm a massive fan of twitter namely as its largely an anarchy. There's no editorial control - which can be a good thing or a bad thing - and yes largely its verbal diarrhoea but its entertaining, probably more so than what an online newspaper article is.

And speaking of newspaper articles - had this forwarded to me today. For those of you who know me a little better know the relevance to this:

Does it matter where babies come from?

Australia has had its first baby via an Indian surrogate come home. A very touching and quite a sweet article.

Shanti!
(it's peace in hindi)