This article kind of misses the point in a few ways
1. During important events, a lot of us want to be/feel connected to what's going on. Watching on TV does that and following reddit/twitter/web does that too, but picking up the paper hours later doesn't. You could make the same argument as the article about the super bowl: if you want to know what happened, don't use twitter or watch the game on TV (remember when everyone thought the 49ers were going to score on that last drive to win the game? LOL FAIL!) just wait until a few hours after it's over and read about it on your favorite website! I mean, that's all true, but it misses the point. For a lot of events, for better or worse, we want to know what's happening as it happens.
2. I use twitter to follow breaking news and news related to my profession (I'm an economist), so I choose who to follow based on that and know which people are reliable and unreliable; @AntDeRosa (among others) is awesome and responsible; I stopped following some other people for irresponsibility during hurricane sandy, etc. So there's no universal "twitter." I get a lot of valuable "breaking news" out of twitter and reddit, but depending on how other people use it, they may not. I really doubt that the Manjoo really believed that all of the rumors he read online were true.
3. Pretty much all of the relevant breaking news on, say, cyprus was coming from twitter. There are many other examples. For breaking non-mainstream news, there is no alternative to twitter etc. For this event, some of the threads on r/news were amazingly informative.
4. From what I've read, a lot of the misinformation problems were caused by journalists either on TV or online. Point fingers at them.
edit: and by "them" I mean those particular people, not "journalists" as a group.
Pretty much this. I was following the BostonPoliceScanner tag or whatever it was and that information was coming straight from the police scanners. I could usually tell that some of the people misinterpreted what they were hearing and tweeted misinformation but you could easily filter that out by looking at the tweets as a whole, rather than coming just from one source. Any ONE source, I don't care who it is, is going to make errors eventually. The more sources you have, the better.
But I was able to listen in on the major events as they happened and that's what I wanted. I got to hear on the scanner when the first suspect was confirmed deceased and I was listening in as the police were chasing after the second suspect. I heard "shots fired" when they found the second suspect inside the boat, and "suspect in custody! suspect confirmed in custody!" when he was finally caught. Then I listened in to the police officers congratulating each other and feeling proud that their hard work and planning had paid off.
That's what I wanted to get out of that and that's not something you get from reading a newspaper a few hours later. You might get a nice narrative out of it, and some journalist might add some fancy and colorful language to the article, but that doesn't capture the FEELING of being part of it or the kind of suspense you get from listening to the entire thing. Nor do you get to appreciate how much work went into catching this guy. The articles afterwards read like this: "Suspect 1 dead! Suspect 2 was captured! One officer died, another officer critically injured! Here's a picture of a bunch of cops standing around!" But listening in, you get to hear how calm the officers are as they radio in to report some seriously intense stuff. You get to hear their professionalism and how much organization goes into everything. You get to understand fully what it is that they're doing out there. You get a far more human perspective from the incident. That's what I appreciate more than anything.
All true, and you said what I came here to say. Another point: breaking "news" is helpful for those who are affected by the situation at hand. What I think the author of the article fails to mention is that people are following the news because they are either involved, want to be connected (like you said), or know someone who is involved. I have several friends in Boston and I was following the news up to the second because I wanted to see what was happening. I took what I heard with a grain of salt, but I was better informed and more aware of their situation.
1. During important events, a lot of us want to be/feel connected to what's going on. Watching on TV does that and following reddit/twitter/web does that too, but picking up the paper hours later doesn't. You could make the same argument as the article about the super bowl: if you want to know what happened, don't use twitter or watch the game on TV (remember when everyone thought the 49ers were going to score on that last drive to win the game? LOL FAIL!) just wait until a few hours after it's over and read about it on your favorite website! I mean, that's all true, but it misses the point. For a lot of events, for better or worse, we want to know what's happening as it happens.
2. I use twitter to follow breaking news and news related to my profession (I'm an economist), so I choose who to follow based on that and know which people are reliable and unreliable; @AntDeRosa (among others) is awesome and responsible; I stopped following some other people for irresponsibility during hurricane sandy, etc. So there's no universal "twitter." I get a lot of valuable "breaking news" out of twitter and reddit, but depending on how other people use it, they may not. I really doubt that the Manjoo really believed that all of the rumors he read online were true.
3. Pretty much all of the relevant breaking news on, say, cyprus was coming from twitter. There are many other examples. For breaking non-mainstream news, there is no alternative to twitter etc. For this event, some of the threads on r/news were amazingly informative.
4. From what I've read, a lot of the misinformation problems were caused by journalists either on TV or online. Point fingers at them.
edit: and by "them" I mean those particular people, not "journalists" as a group.