Blame stupidity for Twitter users’ stupid posts

During #DFMChat, the weekly best-practices dialogue on Twitter among Digital First Media journalists, I went to retrieve a link to Steve Buttry’s latest entry in his #twutorial series for effective Twitter use.

Having read and blogged about it only a couple days earlier, I wanted to recommend Buttry’s suggestions on how to build Twitter followers.

While there, I discovered another link that seems worth the Twitter user’s time: “Don’t blame Twitter when journos tweet stupid things; blame stupidity.”

As Buttry states:

“Newspapers have traditionally had multiple layers of editors to filter out most of the stupid things that reporters said. But reporters now operate without the editor filter on many levels: social media, TV interviews, public speaking, emails that don’t always stay private and conversations in bars that could be recorded on cell phones.”

I appreciate this statement both as a journalist and as a student of library and information science. Both professions have an interest in promoting the importance of credible, reliable information.

Today’s reader has to be savvy about trusting information that he or she consumes.

Buttry’s blog is a timely warning to the producers of online content: you have to be your own editor and if you have a lapse in judgement, it isn’t the fault of the medium.