I have a passionate hatred for the practice of replacing informed journalism with vox pop content. The point of following the news on subtle issues is to get better information than I can pull out of my own head, and hearing "what people are saying about this" doesn't offer that.
The ability to replace a call to an expert with a twitter search has done serious damage to local news (not that it was much good to start with), and it's increasingly spilling into sources like Wired.
As an aside, I really hope muffycat1974 is the Secretary of State.
Editors at the Washington Post called this kind of story a "AAA" assignment, meaning that a reporter was tasked to "Ask Any Asshole". This was long before Twitter, etc. They would actually stop random people on the street and ask their opinions.
The ability to replace a call to an expert with a twitter search has done serious damage to local news (not that it was much good to start with), and it's increasingly spilling into sources like Wired.
As an aside, I really hope muffycat1974 is the Secretary of State.