NPR

A Call For Journalists To Stop Tweeting

The Twitter app icon on a mobile phone in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Twitter is ruining American journalism, says New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo. He wants people in the profession to do more lurking on the social media site and less posting.

Manjoo (@fmanjoo) tells Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson that Twitter is ruining journalism because reporters tend to use the social media platform as an assignment desk.

“If something is big on Twitter, we put it on cable news, we put it in the paper, we put it everywhere else,” he says. “I don’t think Twitter is sort of a reflection of the real world.” 

Manjoo also argues that Twitter has become sort of a “clubhouse” for journalists. He says he noticed that writing clever tweets was distracting from his actual job as a journalist.

“My job is to write

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