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

186 CHAPTER 7 | FRom SummARy To SynTHESiS

her community of Watertown, Massachusetts, believes that such

forums could help foster the sense of community that is a necessary

precondition to newspaper readership. Williams also runs a project

called Placeblogger.com, which tracks local blogs around the world.

“The news creates a shared pool of stories that gives us a way to talk

to people who aren’t family or close friends or people who we will never

meet — in short, our fellow citizens,” Williams says by e-mail. “The truth

is, people still want those neighbor-to-neighbor contacts, but the tradi-

tional ways of doing it don’t fit into the lives that people are actually

living today. your core audience is tired, sitting on the couch with their

laptop, and watching Lost with one eye. Give them someone to sit with.”

Critics of blogs have been looking at the wrong thing. While tradition-

alists disparage bloggers for their indulgence of opinion and hyperbole,

they overlook the sense of community and conversation that blogs have

fostered around the news. What bloggers do well, and what news organi-

zations do poorly or not at all, is give their readers someone to sit with.

News consumers — the public, citizens, us — still want the truth. But we

also want to share it and talk about it with our like-minded neighbors and

friends. The challenge for journalism is not that we’ll lose our objectivity;

it’s that we won’t find a way to rebuild a sense of community.

Don’t Fear Twitter

John Dickerson is Slate magazine’s chief political correspondent and politi-

cal director of CBS News. Before joining Slate, Dickerson covered politics

for Time magazine, including four years as the magazine’s White House

correspondent. Dickerson has also written for the New York Times and

Washington Post and is a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review.

This essay first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Nieman Reports.

■ ■ ■

JOhN DiCKeRsON

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f I were cleverer, this piece on Twitter and journalism would fit in

Twitter’s 140-character limitation. The beauty of Twitter when prop-

erly used — by both the reader and the writer — is that everyone knows

what it is. No reader expects more from Twitter than it offers, and no

one writing tries to shove more than necessary into a Twitter entry,

which is sometimes called a Tweet, but not by me, thank you.

Not many people know what Twitter is, though, so I’m going to go on

for a few hundred words. Twitter is a Web site that allows you to share

your thoughts instantly and on any topic with other people in the Twit-

ter network as long as you do so in tight little entries of 140 characters or

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