‘The Commentariat is under threat’

Shane Richmond, a tech colum­nist for the Daily Telegraph, wrote a piece the other day about how other colum­nists tackle Twitter.

Most of them take a stand against Twitter and label it as a bor­ing site pop­u­lated by a bunch of com­plain­ers who are also scary. The ani­mos­ity and snark comes, Richmond says, from the fact that these writ­ers know next to noth­ing about Twitter.

They’re mis­tak­ing Twitter for a pub­lish­ing plat­form, which – as I’ve writ­ten before – it isn’t. To crit­i­cise Twitter for its con­tent (or, I should say, your per­cep­tion of its con­tent) makes as much sense as crit­i­cis­ing the con­tent of the tele­phone net­works or the postal ser­vice. Like them, Twitter is a means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing. The con­tent com­mu­ni­cated has no bear­ing on its value.

Plus, the ease of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between writ­ers and read­ers on Twitter scares these old-fashioned colum­nists, Richmond says.

It’s now pos­si­ble for colum­nists and com­pa­nies to hear what peo­ple are say­ing about them. That’s unnerv­ing for colum­nists, not least because their opin­ions are now fre­quently chal­lenged by peo­ple who know more than they do. Instead of respond­ing like adults – cor­rect­ing when they’ve made a mis­take, engag­ing when some­one raises a sen­si­ble point and defend­ing them­selves from false accu­sa­tions – they are whin­ing like chil­dren and dis­miss­ing tech­nolo­gies that they don’t understand.