Via BuzzMachine, a very interesting post by Jeff Jarvis: The article as luxury or byproduct. Here's the intro:
A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a byproduct of the process.
* See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.)
(And aren’t you proud of me for not drawing the obvious and embarrassing comparison to Times editor Bill Keller’s Luddite trolling about Twitter even as his man in Twitter, Stelter, proves what a valuable tool it is?)
Jarvis goes on to talk about other examples such as the nonstop blogging and tweeting done by many reporters in the recent Canadian election. And it wasn't just the reporters—all kinds of ordinary folks were doing the same thing and joining the conversation at #elxn41 and #cdnpoli.
Jarvis makes some very strong points in his post, though I wouldn't write off "the article" just yet. Until we can organize tweets and blog posts into meaningful mosaics, we're going to need writers who can concentrate on an issue long enough to make sense of it in 1500 to 3000 coherent words.
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