A Local Take on Twitter and the Future of Newspapers

Mariane Matera has a nice piece up on her "Why the Richmond Times-Dispatch Is Dying" blog that looks at the phenom known as Twitter and its implications for the world of daily newspapers. She does an excellent job of chasing the metaphor of Twitter as an engaging cocktail party, but falls short in her attempt to position Twitter as another nail in the print media coffin, I think.

Her presumption is that what individuals want is to curl up inside of a small bottle with a replica of an old schooner made of matchsticks and themselves -- all them, all the time. I think Jim Carey was in a film like that, minus the matchstick schooner.

Newspapers should be afraid, be very afraid. I would hazard a guess many bloggers are frustrated reporters who couldn’t get hired by the almighty paper or had other careers to pursue but still wanted to write. Even if no one is reading them, they are self-fulfilling their desire to communicate. Several have amassed faithful readerships any newspaper columnist would envy. Twitter flings open the communications portal even more – to those who don’t even have the verbal wherewithal to blog, who haven’t got the skill and talent to put together an informative, tight, well-thought out 1,000-word Style Back Page. They don’t have much to say, but they have this to say, and dammit, they’re going to say it, and what do you know, a couple of hundred or more people will read it.

It’s the Mini-Me Newspaper, all about just me and what I think is interesting. Subscribers come onboard, whether you’re a celebrity, the life-of-the-party, the wagon train leader, the scummy salesman, the lonely girl, the frustrated reporter…doesn’t matter. You are the center of your universe and a galaxy of Tweeters will revolve around you in an exchange of news, ideas, jokes, secrets, sighs and lies. It’s your party within a party in an ever-expanding chain of parties where the conversation never stops except for the occasional sighting of a whale being carried by birds through an azure sky.

I'm not convinced that print newspapers have what it takes to stay hearty, hale and healthy for years to come as the technological revolution continues, but I've yet to be convinced that they are destined to implode either.

What I am noticing more and more about Twitter is just how similar to blogging it is -- and how often "tweets" (the Twitter version of a blog post) direct people to news articles and other sites. The fact of the matter is that very few people have enough interesting crap stuck in their brains to be entertaining without killing potential followers with self-referential Chinese water torture.