November 27, 2013
Journalists can't get enough of Twitter's constant stream of news
Why do journalists prefer Twitter to Facebook? I’ve asked myself that question a few times, but Ezra Klein has gone a step further and answered it in his blog at The Washington Post.
The reason, I think, is that Twitter is simply more useful for our jobs. For better or worse, it’s where news breaks today. It’s also where a lot of real-time reporting happens.
If you follow the right accounts, your Twitter timeline can be a lot like the wire services — a constant stream of breaking stories. That’s the kind of thing we’re used to, and it’s what we appreciate most about Twitter.
If we had any sense we would be concentrating more on Facebook because it drives 10 times as much traffic as Twitter. But Facebook seems too staid. It’s more like a quiet conversation among friends than the frenzied firehose we get from Twitter.
And while most Twitter users likely only check it out from time to time, we in the business can be quite obsessive about it, never wanting to missing a tweet. By comparison, Facebook is ho-hum.