Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Twitter and journalism

Interesting report of his assignment to profile Rep. Michelle Bachmann in 140-character tweets by Newsweek's Andrew Romano. Romano's bosses asked him to write a profile using Twitter. He was to spend time following her campaign, tweeting along the way, then sit down with her for a formal interview and everything would be summed up in a regular print magazine piece.

After the tweets turned out to be negative, Bachmann cancelled the interview and the print piece never happened. But what's interesting is Romano's reaction to the experience. At first, he writes, he was skeptical with the new style of coverage, but he was won over. It's a piece that will make you think about future journalism.