On Twitter, Journalists Risk Becoming the Story

A decade ago, reporters largely stayed behind the scenes. Now they’re becoming personal brands on social media. Today, we’re living in a moment where technology has made it not only possible for everyone to have a say about global affairs, but for everyone to consider what they have to say as important.

As journalists, we talk all the time about the differences between old media — newspapers, TV networks, radio — and social media (or what we sometimes now call “branded content”) in the vein of online outlets like BuzzFeed or YouTube. It’s a different way to make money from the media. At the end of the day, we’re talking about businesses. We see The New York Times now has a whole area of branded content.

Social media impacts us as journalists because we need to adapt. You can be a successful professional journalist who has done amazing reporting, but if you don’t have an online following, or if you don’t have a relevant Twitter or Instagram account, or the correct YouTube channel, then all of a sudden you are not important. Social media can mean more than if you were working for one of the biggest newspapers out there.

I believe this is telling journalists that our audiences are looking at media in a different way. The dialogue with the media has become a lot more open. It’s certainly a lot easier for governments to criticize the media. We must realize that people are now choosing to see, hear, and read whatever they want. This makes things way more polarized.

As a journalist, or as someone who is in the media and “in the game” so to speak, it’s an interesting time to reflect: “Okay, what are we confronting here? How is the media going to be in 10 years?” We could not foresee these changes 10 or 15 years ago. Who could have predicted that the opinions of a YouTube influencer can sometimes have more of a say in the world than a journalist reporting the facts? Some don’t do the research. They don’t do the investigation. Unfortunately, this has meant that a lot of good journalists can get lost in the game of getting more Twitter followers or more views on YouTube.

I have seen reporters become more extreme with their opinions, even though I doubt it is necessarily what they really think. Journalists increasingly view their impact by the metric of social media instead of reporting. But, hey, it sounds cool online.