The New Yorker published an article called, “The Construction of a Twitter Aesthetic”, this past week.  I bring up this article because not only was it a good read, but it held some incredibly astonishing truth within it.

The thing that I found informative and interesting was this one sentence:

“Twitter style works beyond the hundred-forty-character limit.”

At first, this made absolutely no sense to me at all. Twitter is all about the character limit, how can you expand that use? But as I sat there and thought about it (I was currently tweeting as I read the article), I finally grasped what the author was trying to say.

When you use Twitter, you develop a certain persona under your handle. The things you say come out concise and witty, which ,we as journalists, try to achieve daily. So, to my understanding, the use of “twitter style” beyond its infamous character limit refers to writing eloquently and concise at longer posts.

By limiting the amount of words and letters you can use, you train yourself to only write and include the absolute necessary information. Therefore, if you take this skill when writing an article, you already have the skills needed to include only the stuff you really need to convey your thought and idea. Mind-blowing.

I want to take it back a week or so and talk about chapter 4 in The News About The News.

I want to talk about this chapter because it blew my mind when I read it. Growing up in an era where technology has grown and now become such a vital part of our lives and daily function, I just assumed that television news was the know-all portal of everything going on in the world.

Now don’t get me wrong, I always believe that despite the dying newspaper industry, they, too, played a vital role in informing the public. But what I didn’t know was that TV news still gets all of their stories straight from newspapers.

Think about this…we pride ourselves on being in the “golden age of media”, relying on it so much for everyday things. And with the rise of TV newscast, we pride ourselves on getting the news from this innovative portal and no longer having to rely on the ink on paper any longer.

Yet, without these newspapers, TV news would be left with nothing, having to fend for themselves. With only a fraction of the reporters that newspapers have, TV would have to be completely restructured if newspapers were to be completely wiped out.

Yes, it may be a little outdated, however I find The News About The News to be a very helpful textbook supplement to the course.

I guess the function I really like about the book is the fact that after every piece of information and idea that the authors write about is immediately followed by a real-world example. This practice helps me tremendously to picture exactly what the authors are trying to convey, and allows me to apply it to my own work and writing.

Speaking of the authors, I love the fact that both Leonard Downie Jr and Robert Kaiser are season journalists who worked for a prestigious paper and have plenty of life experience between the two of them. This makes me feel as though I am in good hands and that I’m being told nothing but the truth, both verified and accurate.

I know a lot of people disagree with this book as being our textbook, since it isn’t up-to-date with a lot of what we cover in class, especially when it comes to the internet. But I feel like it’s a necessity to understand where journalism started from and how it came to be what it is today, in order to do the best we can now.

Market research allows for newspapers to tailor themselves to “suit the desires of irregular readers, or nonreaders whom they hope to attract.”

Yes, this action can be good in appealing to those people who read the paper maybe once a week and those who couldn’t be bothered to read about the ins and outs of Syrian wars and al Qaeda leaders. But this would produce a paper focused on short local stories and entertainment tid bits. By appealing to these types of readers, newspapers kick out the foreign and national news its loyal readers rely on.

Personally, I believe that market research really only shows that most of the citizens want to read tabloids and celebrity gossip. So let them stick to The National Enquirer and Star magazine. But lets keep the Times and Wall Street Journal as they are.

As journalists, its our duty to inform the public of the news – what’s going on in the world they live in. Our job isn’t to give them what they want to read. If that was the case, Americans would never learn anything new about politics and international relations. Which, quite honestly, is something everyone needs to be aware of.

We are just one piece of a giant puzzle, so who cares what Miley Cyrus was wearing or who George Clooney is with now. Lets instead learn who’s at war, where we stand in the national debt crisis, how Obamacare can affect our daily lives.

In the first chapter of “The News about the News” we learn about the concepts of good journalism and bad journalism. What I found so interesting is the effects good or bad reporting can have on a community and general public.

“Good journalism does not often topple a president, but it frequently changes the lives of citizens, both grand and ordinary.”

What I loved most about this quote from the book is the very last part, about changing the lives a people both ‘grand and ordinary’. Journalism doesn’t have to be focused on strictly politicians, CEOs, presidents, etc. It can also be focused on the average Joe, because after all, journalism is for the everyday person.

“Good journalism holds communities together in times of crisis, providing the information and the images that constitute shared experiences.”

In national crisis’, like the 9/11 terror attacks and any school shooting, a good journalistic reporting can unify the nation in an amazing way. And that’s what drives me to be involved in journalism, because that ability is such a beautiful thing.

And then there is bad journalism. Its this reporting that causes so much criticism towards the media and journalists alike.

“Bad journalism — failing  to report important news, or reporting news shallowly, inaccurately or unfairly — can leave people dangerously uninformed.”

For instance, with the CNN reporting of the Boston marathon bombing, it caused so many people to think they were safe when really the suspects were still at large. This puts the citizens, as well as the police officers and FBI agents at risk of getting hurt.