Blogging used to be the fastest way to respond to events. Yet when multiple events are moving at hyperspeed, blogging is woefully slow. Write a thoughtful ten-paragraph think piece about what just happened and by the time you hit Publish, it’s old news or contradicted by new events.
Consider yesterday. It started with Trump having a Twitter tirade against Christine Blasey Ford and ranting about radical leftists. Then the supposed Rosenstein bombshell hit. Except it wasn’t a bombshell. Rosenstein was just making a joke. Yet NYT published it as being a serious comment. Then the right-wing mostly said the whole thing was a trap so Rosenstein should not be fired. Oh, Grassley imposed a deadline on Ford, then relented. And McConnell said he has the votes yet three Republican senators say they will not make a decision until Ford testifies. All of these events spawned massive mass media and social media coverage. If you aren’t quite sure what news events I’m referring to here, that just proves my point.
The best way to keep up with insanely fast-moving news is Twitter, especially by using Twitter Lists. You can create group of selected people to read in a list or read someone else’s list. The huge advantage here is it’s filtered, way less noise and distraction. Go to your Twitter profile. Click Lists. Then Create a List.
If something happens, it’s on Twitter first. If you want news as it happens, before most other sources have it, look for it on Twitter. Twitter lists help filter out the noise, crazies, bots, and trolls. Because, yeah, Twitter can be a war zone too.