The triumph of Twitter
Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. With Twitter having transformed the way the news media cover presidential elections, politicians and journalists are now agreeing on one thing: That is a huge problem. “Twitter is the central news source for the Washington-based political news establishment,” said Peter Hamby, a Washington, D.C.-based political reporter for CNN. But the “shallow nature of today’s political journalism,” fed in large part by Twitter, has led to “a journalistic reward structure in Washington that often prizes speed and scoops over context,” Hamby said in a research paper written while he was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy last spring. Hamby studied Twitter’s role in reshaping how the media covered the 2012 presidential campaign, and how wary political strategists reacted by fencing candidates off from most reporters, particularly those in the once-prestigious traveling press corps. “Any perceived gaffe or stumble can become a...