To expand, journalists used to actually investigate which took time which means it took money so that the story released had lots of corroborating sources, scrutinized by editors, and then released as a complete story. That might have meant things like actually interviewing people, requesting documents from places, or visiting the places in question.

Today, it is just a bunch of people collecting tweets of random people on the interwebs. Race to publish before competition means there's no time for editorial review of simple things like grammar and coherent thoughts let alone accuracy, so lots of FUD can be spread very quickly as "news".

Those well thought out articles are also considered too long and boring and get reposted on socials as TL;DR as if it were their own thoughts.

We used to make fun of the microwave generation with "I want it now" type comments. Now, it's I need it in less than 140chars, or I'm scrolling past it.

The death spiral you describe is like a train wreck that you can do nothing about.

The most infuriating thing is that an article can take absolutely any stance on an issue simply by cherry picking tweets to go along with it.

News has become a weird kind of curation market. And the funny thing about this payment arrangement that publishers want is that they are not paying any of those tweeters who may be breaking the news or themselves curating the info.

Why would you pay someone for a tweet? They posted it for free. Collecting tweets isn't journalism. Asking the user for more than 140 chars about what they are witnessing along with multiple others would then be closer to journalism. Tweets are just people self identifying who journalists could be interviewing. The interview allows for follow up to the tweet.

If I see tweets in any article other than tweets from the people that the article is about, I will throw that news site in the dust bin. Using tweets as evidence or as anything important tells me that news site is definitely in a death spiral. I think the only place I put up with it is on the local news and even then I'm gritting my teeth.

> To expand, journalists used to actually investigate which took time which means it took money so that the story released had lots of corroborating sources, scrutinized by editors, and then released as a complete story. That might have meant things like actually interviewing people, requesting documents from places, or visiting the places in question.

This was only desired and seen as useful and interesting when people had nothing else to do.