Disruptive Conversations

In the latest reminder that in the "rush to publish", blog writers need to remember some of the basic rules of journalism, last Friday Duncan Riley over at TechCrunch came out with "Twitter Testing Advertising in Twitter Streams". Given Twitter's current prominence in the social media playground, this naturally set off a blogstorm of commentary around the potential of ads in Twitter.

And then Vasanth Sridharan over at Silicon Alley Insider did what should have been done at the beginning... he checked with the folks at Twitter! Their answer... no ads in Twitter.

Now, sure, Duncan Riley and the TechCrunch crowd are in the business of breaking news and in an era when gaining the credibility as a place to get breaking news means being only minutes (or even seconds) ahead of your competitors, I can understand why he ran with it. But it does seem odd given that it's Twitter and all of us on the service are so interconnected, that a quick fact check with the folks at Twitter couldn't have been done. (I also agree with I know that most all of us in the blogging world weren't schooled in the traditional ethics of journalism... nor do we necessarily claim to be journalists... but on a certain level, it seems to me to just be plain old common senses:

If you are going to write about someone, why not check with them about the accuracy of your story first?

Kudos to the Silicon Alley Insider folks for doing the right thing. P.S. On a similar vein, "Veracity: The Future of New Journalism" (although I agree with Mathew Ingram that spelling is also important!)

Technorati Tags: blogging, writing, journalism, fact checking