Is the future of the newspaper twitter? Yes

On one level it is patently absurd that the depth and expert observational skills could ever be replaced by a technology that centers around 140 character bursts. However, if one actually looks at the way most people read the paper, and newspaper websites you might not think I'm that far off base.

First, people are famous for scanning the headlines. It has often been stated by long time readers that they read the paper from cover to cover in less than 30 minutes. Unless they have extraordinary powers of comprehension and word recognition, it's highly unlikely that they actually read every word. Twitter is pretty much nothing but the headlines. The shortened links that many use from sources like bit.ly offer a reader the opportunity, but not the requirement to read deeper.

Second, nothing could be more immediate than twitter. There have been plenty of incidents of people tweeting directly from the source of a major newsevent. The most famous was the on the scene twitpic of the plane in the hudson river. In this age of communication, going home to write about an event, or even looking for a hotspot to type something in to your laptop is just too darn slow. The short format can deliver immediacy and limit the burden on the newsgather-er. That is far from true of the articles that most citizen journalists are expected to contribute to their hyper local paper.

Third, the follower system can deliver the often idealized individual customization missing from the bulky newspaper. If a person wants to they can select to follow a favorite sports team, a couple of key causes, areas of personal interest, and a specialist with recipes for foie gras. They'll only get that info when there is "news" unlike even a newspaper website that they have to check and search to see if there are stories of interest. Twitter can fulfil the pushed power of a subscription, and deliver it as it is happening.

However, twitter has the same issue as newspaper websites, by breaking the bulk of content into efficient snippets, it is extraordinarily difficulty to monetize this content.

As dour as this might seem, there is one thing that newspapers might want to consider. They can use twitter to enhance their content. From the basics of the observation(s), they can use their expertise, experience and contacts to build relevance what might otherwise have been a singular event. What I'm saying in short is that twitter might eventually become the single best source that a journalist could ever have. A million eyes watching everything that happens in a city, and looking for someone to connect the dots.