Big Brother programs are “has-been”.
Enough with bimbos and pricks locked in the same room to know who's gonna f*** who.
Let's talk about a journalist’s job. That is : pass on the good news. Get people informed.
Is it possible to get a valueable information only with Twitter? 

Dear reader, if you don't know what Twitter is and how it works,
I can't do nothing for you. Even my grandma knows.

Take five experienced journalists. Lock them into jail with computers for one entire week.
They can only have news through Twitter and Facebook. Give them food of course so they don't starve.
CDs are allowed. But no radio. They must be apart of from the rest of the world for seven days.

Then you open the door again. Did they miss something big? Did they learn something new ?
Can we show the finger up to all mainstream media and get only fed through social media sources ?

This is exactly the experience that five journalists lived in February 2010 - two French, one Swiss,
one Canadian and one Belgian. They choosed chose to stay apart from mainstream Broadcasts f
or one week, in a French farm in the Perigord.

They wrote a blog about that.

The rules : Use only Twitter and Facebook to get informed. OK, only Twitter actually.
Because at the end of the experience, they talked only about twitter, not facebook.
Because with twitter you don't have to be friends with the person followed. 
That is why Twitter is the freshest tool.

They were able to follow anyone, but they could'ntcouldn’t click on the links.
Only 140 bloody characters to know how the world is turning.


What did they learn ?

1 A LOT of information. But different from a classical news reader.

2 The editorial line is different, of course. It has nothing to do with any TV news or mainstream radio news.
In the French –speaking area, twitterer's like politics buzz,
little sentences from that can bring reactions or a scandal.
On the contrary, twitterers don't care about strikes of the train drivers for example.
It was very difficult for our journalists to get news on tTwitter about weather, strikes,
and crime stories. Three topics that popular medias relay everyday.

3 When there are breaking news, you're the first to be informed, before AFP, AP and Reuters,
the 3 main press agencies in the world.

4 When the Breaking news is are actually a hoax, you feel like social networks are shit.

5 To be sure a breaking news are a hoax or not, you need to listen to the twitterer's’ reactions.
That brings us to point 6.

6 When a lot of people say the same thing, you have to believe them.
"You have to believe what people say by their numbers".
God damn. It's a journalist who said that.

5 The five journalists all cried for a good old radio flash. Why ?
With twitter you have only 140 characters to say something new.
To have a whole idea of what's going on, you have to read some more from the same person.
It's like you have just one piece of the puzzle every five minutes.
All people tweeting don't care about the main pieces of the puzzle because everybody knows it in the normal world. Our 5 journalists weren’t in the normal world.
They didn't know the main pieces of the news. It has been difficult or impossible
to get the whole story of any event.


At the end of the experience, the five journalists were all treated like stars
in French mainstream medias. I swear. In suits, in every channel on TV, they told their story.

The conclusions of the experience are :
1 In France we get so bored that when five journalists decide to get voluntarily locked in a farm
with 5 computers and red wine, they come back and we offer them a stage
like they were hostages in a hostile country.

2 Ok, twitter is good if you follow the good right persons. But who's the right person ? There are so many millions of twitterers to follow, that you have to choose your angle, profile, specialize yourself, and narrow down your followings.

3 Everybody need professionals to make information understandable.
Instead a buzzzzzzz buzzzzzzing in your ears, which makes any news incomprehensible.
Thank goodness, my job is not going to end.
Good night.