Alan Rusbridger, then editor-in-chief of The Guardian, devoted part of a wide-ranging speech on the state of journalism in November 2010 to the eye-rolling that met any mention of Twitter in media circles, and answered it with fifteen reasons the service mattered: it is an amazing form of distribution; it is where things happen first; as a search engine it rivals Google; it is a formidable aggregation tool; a great reporting tool; a fantastic form of marketing; a series of common conversations, or it can be; it is more diverse; it changes the tone of writing; it is a level playing field; it has different news values; it has a long attention span; it creates communities; it changes notions of authority; and it is an agent of change.
“Saying that Twitter has got nothing to do with the news business is about as misguided as you could be,” he argued. At the time more than 450 Guardian and Observer staff were on the platform, alongside 70 single-subject sites and section feeds.
The item on his list that carried the most weight was different news values. Acts of journalism were happening on the platform constantly, with people taking on the roles of reporter and editor, but they were hard to recognise as journalism because they arrived as fragments rather than as the finished, packaged product the trade was built around — the condition described elsewhere as ambient journalism. That gap between fragment and package is still where most arguments about social platforms and reporting start.