There are at least two journalism awards on our radar this year, the Smurfit Business Journalism (in November) awards and the National Media Awards. I wonder will anyone consider entering a tweet as part of their submission?
This is not a ridiculous idea. Try telling the person who tweeted about the plane crash-landing in New York Hudson's river, whose message was seen around the world, that Twitter cannot count as journalism.
I would be very tempted to forego a 'proper' entry in favour of a tweet, or series of tweets.
Except...
I have no decent tweets. For that matter, I have no real decent blog entries either. My tweets and my blog posts are largely just opinions, just views. And they are as cheap and as plentiful as grains of sand on a beach. So, being honest, nothing I have done digitally really counts for consideration in a journalism award.
But I would love it if somebody channeled their journalistic energy into Twitter (or blogs) and broke significant stories on that medium. If so, I cannot see any reason why a tweet should not count for a journalism award.
How does one make money from tweet journalism? (From the commercial side, all good journalistic intentions aside, it's the advertising money that pays the bills. Can't advertise on twitter. Why send all your readers there?)
Posted by: Aaron | March 11, 2009 at 02:32 PM
Yep, absolutely valid point there.
No, it's just to jolt a few oldies into paying attention that I'd like to do it, really.
Knock them out of their complacency.
Th dream scenario would be to research a great story and release its details only on Twitter, over the course of a day.
The rest of the media, when it eventually verified the story, would have no choice but to give the tweeter credit.
And awards judges, if the story was strong enough, would have no choice but to consider it. If they didn't, but gave a poorer story the award instead, they'd just discredit themselves.
Posted by: Adrian | March 12, 2009 at 10:20 AM
You're talking like Twitter is an inherently good thing. I'm not convinced that it is.
"The rest of the media, when it eventually verified the story" -- do you mean when editors give credibility to a story by independently checking the facts of their journalists, before releasing it to the wider world?
Would you really trust a 140-character text message from an individual as a RELIABLE source of news?
Posted by: Lithium Industries | March 12, 2009 at 08:03 PM