Today, for the first time that I know of, one of my Twitter tweets was published elsewhere. During Melbourne’s heatwave I made a comment about the power in our office going down, which got picked up in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Whilst I have not problem with people using my Tweets (as long as they are within context), this trend I’ve been seeing from Fairfax papers (and others I’m sure) is just ridiculous. Collating a number of peoples comments, probably skimmed straight off Twitter Search, does not make an interesting article. It’s like writing a piece that says “a lot of people spoke about how good beer is today”. If newspapers seriously want to stay in the game, they are going to have to use citizen journalism as more than just a strip mine.
Like with the CNN experience! They used a tweet to illustrate a totally opposing view. Especially lazy considering that Twitter is not the most popular social networking site - but is easier to get quotes from than, say, Facebook.
Bah.
I totally agree. Since I wrote this I’ve seen so many more slack articles that have just mined Twitter for “quotes”. I did read somewhere that all Tweets remain copyright of the author, so it would be interesting if somebody were to challenge the practice.
I would like to hear more about your CNN experience.