| I think Twitter has been bad for journalism in that it presents a huge distraction, on top of the dangers of being an echo chamber (which varies depending on who you choose to follow). But the phenomenon of reporters being able to personally convey their behind-the-scene thinking and experience? I think that’s been a huge boon of valuable, informative insights we previously could only get in memoirs and 10-year anniversary reflections. What you see published as articles is something that’s been trimmed and edited for largely pragmatic purposes and convention, not through some rigorous standard of epistemology. The NYT’s Rukmini Callimachi is a great example of someone whose tweets greatly enrich her published work. Here is a thread of insights and reporting that became part of a next-day story on Iran and Sulemani: https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761 One of the best examples of all is David Farhenthoid, who tweeted the progress of what seemed like a very picayune (relatively speaking) factcheck of Trump's charity claims: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/david-fahr... > I spent a day searching for Trump’s money on Twitter, asking vets’ organizations if they’d gotten any of it. I used Trump’s Twitter handle, @realdonaldtrump, because I wanted Trump to see me searching. > Trump saw. > The next night, he called me to say he had just then given away the $1 million, all in one swoop, to a nonprofit run by a friend. That meant when Lewandowski said Trump’s money was “fully spent,” it was actually still in Trump’s pocket. Here's a more detailed breakdown of how Farenthold conveyed the progress of his reporting through Twitter, including screenshots of the legal pad he used as a checklist: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13810210/h... By "picayune", I mean that in late 2016 (e.g. September through November) Trump's charity claims were extremely small-time compared to the actual presidential race. Without a way to publicly convey and accumulate (i.e. snowball) his reporting, Fahrenthold may not have been given enough time (by his editors) to have the critical mass needed for a meaningful story. His work eventually resulted in a Pulitzer-winning investigation, and the impetus for the most damaging ongoing state-level investigations into Trump today: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/david-fahrenthold |