No No No – This Is Not News!

There is no doubt that the various social media platforms that many of us use and enjoy on a daily basis have created an avenue for people from all walks of life to have their voices heard.

For many, those voices are drowned out in a blurry haze of tweets, Instagram photos, and Facebook posts, and one might wonder if it’s all really worth it. To really cut through that haze, one has to be particularly visible. When you have a name, your message bubbles to the top.

But is the mechanism for getting your message through more important than the message itself?

Caught a glimpse of this in Monday’s print edition of the The Age – with a detailed analysis of various Twitter accounts of Victorian parliamentarians in the lead up to this weekend’s state election.

“Victorian parliamentarians have amassed a cacophony of more than 150,000 Twitter followers but lag behind many of their federal government counterparts.”

You know what? Who cares? Is the “median number of followers of Victorian MPs” actually relevant – to anything?

Print media is struggling enough already to get enough eyeballs to survive in the medium to long term, so why waste time and effort on this?

Report the news – don’t invent something that isn’t news, and write it up as if it is.

We’re smarter than that – so respect that.