Filed by Bil at 8:44 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media

So - as I took a break from preparing for the future to take a glance at what’s happening in the present, I couldn’t help but notice World Cup scores. Team USA is out, but for once in our lifetime, we got closer to the cup than England, France, and Italy did. Had I been paying closer attention to Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates, I might have known that sooner.

But something struck me: I didn’t need to know that any sooner than I did. Its relevance to my life is pretty low. The World Cup is just something I take a mild interest in every four years.

And in reading this post on BuzzMachine, my faith in the phenomenon of social media as a source of news was renewed, and in better terms than I could have previously expressed:

…They did not argue that this would replace reporters on the scene; it complements.

That’s it exactly. It complements. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. have a very-well-deserved reputation as cybermall food courts for teenagers, but I’ve been arguing against an all-out stereotype for some time now. My main point has been that I am kept informed about what I choose to be informed about, which is great for me personally, and I’ve been touting the blending of social networking with social news as a good thing. But I’ve also always said that actual journalism is still necessary - we do need those quality journalism majors coming out of quality university programs. Social media complements.

The little revelation I had tonight was that the speed is not the essential component of the new media. What matters is the breadth and depth that we can get to now that was not attainable before. Even if it seems inane on the surface, there’s always more to a tweet or a status update than just the few words we see at first. It’s not that I need my news faster than ever. What I like is the specialization and the interactivity.

Speed can be a dangerous thing. Real-time news is not exactly a new phenomenon – live news coverage has been around since we started getting news by radio. The trouble is that high speed directly conflicts with quality filters. Faster news is inherently less accurate than news that’s been fact-checked. And there’s the public response, too. We all know what happened during the original broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.”

But speed can also be of great use. A prime example of the importance of knowing what’s going on while it’s going on is the riots surrounding the (somewhat) recent Iranian elections, where journalists were banned, but where the government couldn’t stop the outpouring of photos and updates from cell phones and laptops. So speed can be good or bad – it’s a fine line to walk.

What I think right now is that social media ought to exist and ought to be used for news - both as a real-time complement to the mainstream “Big” news, but also as a source when mainstream news doesn’t cover what I want to know. And there’s so much of it, and so much more coming out every day (like oil from a busted BP well into the ocean), and it’s all so accessible, I just have to marvel. It’s like there’s a giant grab bag of bite-sized facts and opinions for journalists to mine, and to use in historical or anthropoligical contexts…which, by the way, is the best way to get objectivity – after everything has already happened, not as it is happening.

Bottom line: social news is here and it’s not going away. Embrace it. Do the world a favor and sign up for Twitter.

…and then do yourself a favor and follow Tip Your Waiter’s Twitter feed.