David Schlesinger, the editor-in-chief of Reuters News, has a fascinating post up at his blog, Full Disclosure — a fitting title, given the topic of the post. Schlesinger writes about how he has been Twittering from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and how his Twitter messages (or “tweets,” as people insist on calling them) actually beat his own wire service, as described in a post at Silicon Alley Insider. The news? That billionaire financier George Soros believes the current economic downturn could be worse than the Great Depression, and that as much as $15-trillion might be needed to save the banking system.
As Schlesinger notes in the post, people have raised a number of issues about this practice, including:
Is it journalism?
Is it dangerous?
Is it embarrassing that my tweets even beat the Reuters newswire?
Am I destroying Reuters standards by encouraging tweeting or blogging?
to which he says he answers: “Yes, Potentially, No and No.” In a comment on the Silicon Alley Insider post, he continues:
(read the rest of this post at the Nieman Journalism Lab blog)