From Inquiry to Academic Writing A Practical Guide, 3rd edition

188 CHAPTER 7 | FRom SummARy To SynTHESiS

The risk for journalism, of course, is that people spend all day Twit-

tering and reading other people’s Twitter entries and don’t engage with

the news in any other way. This seems a pretty small worry. If written

the right way, Twitter entries build a community of readers who find

their way to longer articles because they are lured by these moment-

by-moment observations. As a reader, I’ve found that I’m exposed to

a wider variety of news because I read articles suggested to me by the

wide variety of people I follow on Twitter. I’m also exposed to some

keen political observers and sharp writers who have never practiced

journalism.

Twitter is not the next great thing in journalism. No one should try

to make Twitter do more than it can and no reader should expect too

much from a 140-character entry. As for the critics, their worries about

Twitter and journalism seem like the kind of obtuse behavior that would

make a perfect observational Twitter entry: “A man at the front of the

restaurant is screaming at a waiter and gesticulating wildly. The snacks

on the bar aren’t a four-course meal!”

youTube: The Flattening of politics

Steve Grove is Director of Community Partnerships at Google, and for-

merly directed all news, political programming, and citizen journalism for

youTube. He has been quoted as saying that he regards himself less as an

editor than as a curator of the Web site’s “chaotic sea of content.” A native

of Northfield, Minnesota, he worked as a journalist at the Boston Globe and

ABC News before moving to youTube.

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sTeve GROve

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or a little over a year, I’ve served as youTube’s news and political

director — perhaps a perplexing title in the eyes of many journalists.

Such wonderment might be expected since youTube gained its early

notoriety as a place with videos of dogs on skateboards or kids falling

off of trampolines. But these days, in the ten hours of video uploaded to

youTube every minute of every day (yes — every minute of every day),

an increasing amount of the content is news and political video. And

with youTube’s global reach and ease of use, it’s changing the way that

politics — and its coverage — is happening.

each of the sixteen one-time presidential candidates had youTube

channels; seven announced their candidacies on youTube. Their staffs

uploaded thousands of videos that were viewed tens of millions of times.

By early March of this year, the Obama campaign was uploading two to

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