Twitter, you’re ruining The News…!

I’ve done a couple workshops lately on Twitter as a part of a Social Media blitz at Royal Roads University. It’s been fun (as it always is) to see people get excited about technology, and figure out what THEY would like to do with it (beyond telling everyone what they had for breakfast).

This has meant I’m staying even *more* on top of my Twitter feed than usual, and I’m noticing something: there is a significant time lag between what I hear about on Twitter, and what shows up on the news – TV, radio, whatever. It’s really quite amazing.

It’s like, a story breaks on Twitter, and the network (I don’t want to say “twittisphere”, but i basically mean that) goes to town. In no time,  there might be videos, photos, blog posts, a bunch of background, and *then*, 2 or 3 days later it’s a story on the radio. The whole boing boing Ralph Lauren thing is an example. It’s like we’re all moving at the speed of journalists. Or faster.

I think it’s great. But man, it must really add to the stress of being a journalist.

Anyway, it inspired me to make this cartoon.