What's The Point...of News Articles Quoting Tweets?


 

Did you know that the currently trending celebrity just followed an environmental activist? Or that a celebrity you haven’t heard in the past two years after a controversy, just tweeted about the latest controversy?


Yes, that is the news nowadays and it isn’t something you will find on social media. Several news outlets now use social media posts as their primary source of information. 


Why waste time on calling up celebrities for interviews, scheduling meetings, and asking two questions before they abruptly leave, when you can get their opinion from a two-liner on their personal social media page. Getting it straight from the horse’s mouth as they say. 


The average person spends 90% more time scrolling social media than visiting news websites.


The news outlets also know that. Why seek out serious journalistic pieces when the same news piece can be conveyed through a meme? The new generation especially prefers their news heavily padded with humor so that it does not distress them or add on to their current stress level. 


It’s not because the new generation is incapable of handling serious news pieces; it is because the current world climate has caused literally every individual to experience high levels of stress. 


Fuel prices are up. Rents are up. Food prices are up. But yes, salaries are mostly on the downside. 


The last thing anyone needs is yet another reason to feel unsafe and so most of the general population prefers to receive hard-hitting news through a medium that tells them that, “hey the world is going to hell but at least you get to smile before that actually happens. So here, have a laugh.”


And so we have serious journalism slowly diminish and turn into social media reporters. Just go on social media, look for the currently trending topic and write an article around it. And spend most of the words quoting what other celebrities are saying about it. 


If you still haven’t hit the word count, don’t worry, just pick a random tweet by a random person and add that in. Or a list of tweets that you thought were significant to the topic. Or even if it’s not, who cares? It’s all about hitting that word count limit. 


This is the future of journalism. Articles based on social media posts and tweets. The worst is when some news websites ask you to pay for a subscription to read their articles. 


No, thanks. We can just go on social media for free and check what the celebrity opined for, you know, free. 


So, really, what is the point of news articles quoting tweets? They add no value whatsoever. But they do show up in the quantity of articles in the news website database. 


How about instead of copying and pasting quotes, journalists actually do a little digging and investigate the topic so that they can be of more value to their readers? 


Maybe news articles should focus on quality and being informative, rather than only on entertainment. We have social media that does all the entertaining that we need, thank you very much. 


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