All the world’s a Twitter

Hold the front page:  Twitter is making money.  

Just not for Twitter that’s all. 

 There are hundreds if not thousands of journalists and analysts out there who are writing about the latest phenomenon that is Twitter (as an aside, how “old” does something have to be before it’s no longer a new phenomenon?) they are simply writing every morsel of information or anecdote, every campaign, every hash tag and every celebrity member.  And all this writing about it generates interest and all this interest generates page views.  So at least the newspapers are making money somewhere out of “new” media.  

And so to the latest Twitter debacle; the latest roof-raising rumpus that has got the bloggers in a bruhaha, the tweeters in a tangle and, ahem, the publishers raking in page views as their journalists write about it all.   

One of the most infamous tech bloggers, Michael Arrington, is editor of Tech Crunch.  This site, started in 2005 by Arrington, has grown in stature and popularity and is now one of the most respected sites online for technology news.    Earlier this week Tech Crunch received an email containing hundreds (310 according to them) of documents about Twitter – all very, very sensitive stuff; everything from top level execs who interviewed there, financial projections and strategic plans, to security details and who ate what for lunch.  The information had been gained by a hacker who gained access to an employee’s email account. 

Arrington has said that TechCrunch will not print anything that could embarrass anyone or the names of the high level execs who interviewed there.  But he printed everything else, financials, strategic projects, even a proposal for a pitch about Twitter reality show.  

But was Arrington right or wrong to print what some readers of Tech Crunch are calling “stolen documents”?

There are lots of points to consider here, there is, as with most privacy/journalist/public interest stories, no such thing as black and white.  

• News is by definition something somebody somewhere doesn’t want you to know, quote or spread – it’s something that is NEW.  The quote that Arrington uses from Lord Northcliffe is how most journalists view news:  “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” 
• The greatest news has to be ground breaking, off diary and potentially risky.  Getting information from trusted sources is the key to being a good journalist.  Sources feed information, which it could be argued they have too “stolen” from their company.   Was this just another source, one who had albeit a different method of obtaining information?  If that hacker had instead phoned Twitter and told them the news over the phone, would that have been OK?  In my journo days we received emails from a source called Devilsadvocate@ hotmail.com.  Trusted , no, but useful  and insightful, sometimes yes.  
•  But hacking the account of a Twitter employee is illegal and brings into play a legal minefield of whether journalists can and should publish things that are gained by disreputable means? (The News of the World is currently being investigated for using private investigators to tape MPs conversations – are the two cases so different?)
• Arrington knew that if he didn’t publish it, someone else would.  And someone else wouldn’t be, perhaps so kind (Arrington has written somewhat of an out of character post about his hand wringing decision to print the information). He has at least for the most part kept the information about just the individuals secret and stuck firmly to just to corporate info.
• The old adage about the information being in the public interest –this is a tough one – there is no doubt that Twitter is newsworthy and therefore means the public (or at least some of them) are interested in what is going on within Twitter.  But does that means it’s in the public interest (ie they could be effected by it) or just interesting to the public?
• Arrington’s own personality – he can be acerbic and arrogant when he wants to be – and when he believes he is right and with just cause – this would have had an impact on his decision, with an element of power, and the satisfaction of knowing what a good story this is.
•  TechCrunch is a business and Arrington is in business to make money (don’t forget Arrington has dealt with a number of VC hounds and run a number of businesses before). With the hits he chalked up just through the first day’s battle alone, it’s helping up his average page views and therefore, perhaps in the long run more ad revenues. Also the point that he is drip feeding the information – readers have to continually visit the site to know what the latest news is, increasing the hits further.

Twitter has now called in the lawyers – something TechCrunch will have done way before it decided to print anything.  So now it will be a battle of the legal teams, but the result would have much further reaching im0plications for journalists and their “sources”.