The Perils and Potentials of "Feeding the Beast"

David Carr writing in the NY Times on the new paradigm in political journalism. Quoting Liz Sidoti, national politics editor for The Associated Press, who says she loves social media’s ability to reach and involve audiences, but she is less fond of what it is doing to the political press corps that is feeding the beast. “I worry that reporters are so busy looking after the bells and whistles that they need to on social media that they are not working as finders of fact, asking the tough questions and doing the analysis,” she told me."

Similarly, Peter Hamby, a journalist who can function in both traditional daily reporting and political analysis and who is comfortable in social media observes 

"that politicians who came of age in the Twitter era — Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. Martin O’Malley, Senator Marco Rubio and others — will have an advantage over Hillary Rodham Clinton, who relies on a command-and-control approach in which information is carefully doled out and any journalistic offenders are disciplined."

“I wonder if the machinery of Clinton-world, the layers of staff and ’90s-era wise men, are prepared to deal with the next generation of Instagramming journalist, social media natives who fetishize authenticity,” he said."

Full article in the NY Times  here http://nyti.ms/17BxRFi