Perhaps, we wondered a decade ago, these newfangled social media sites will be our partners, driving traffic, revenue, and transparency, helping us save journalism. Lately, though, we wonder if social media isn’t killing journalism instead. This switch from relief effort to incursion is, of course, not a story about social media companies — which after all have always been in it for the money. It’s about journalists and their unstudied approach to the platforms. Journalists saw Twitter simply as content, sprinkling it throughout their work without considering what that means for their own authority, despite the fact that the use of social media in stories may further undermine public trust in the news. The question isn’t about social media being friend or foe, but whether we’re watching journalism’s suicide by a thousand tweets.
Read the full piece at Nieman Journalism Lab
