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The Guardian Shifts To Twitter After 188 Years of Ink

Posted by Soulskill on Wed Apr 01, 2009 09:53 AM
from the save-the-trees dept.
The Media Communications
teflon_king writes with news that renowned British newspaper The Guardian will be abandoning its paper-and-ink distribution scheme and publishing all articles and news as Tweets. Quoting: "A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include '1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!;' 'OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more;' and 'JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?' Sceptics have expressed concerns that 140 characters may be insufficient to capture the full breadth of meaningful human activity, but social media experts say the spread of Twitter encourages brevity, and that it ought to be possible to convey the gist of any message in a tweet. For example, Martin Luther King's legendary 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial appears in the Guardian's Twitterised archive as 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by,' eliminating the waffle and bluster of the original."
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Submission: Guardian to close move to Twitter: April Fool? by teflon_king (1258600)
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  • Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LingNoi (1066278) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @09:54AM (#27417295)

    I wonder if this will make the guardian more interesting to read..

  • The line of people who want to post in this thread just to get an "achievement" can start here...

    • Achievement Whore, the new Karma Whore.

    • Re:Pandora's blog has been opened (Score:5, Funny)

      by bigtomrodney (993427) * on Wednesday April 01 2009, @10:03AM (#27417557)
      Screw the achievements, where are all the PONIES?!

      • Your post advocates a

        (X) moronic ( ) Totalitarian (X) consumer-driven (X) Charles Brosonish ( ) Governmental

        approach to humor. Your "OMGPonies!" will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular post, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

        (X) Your post was simply unfunny.
        (X) Mailing lists and other legitimate websites would not bother stealing it from you
        (X) Monkeys simply can't aim that well.
        ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
        (X) Slashdot will attempt to use this as an unfunny meme
        (X) Users of email will not put up with it
        (X) Linus Torvalds did not even chuckle
        (X) The police will tour again
        (X) Requires the attention span of a gnat
        (X) Requires immediate total cooperation of God in Heaven
        (X) The meme is tired and worn out and I'm just as likely to get a -1 troll as a +5 funny.

        Specifically, your plan fails to account for

          (X) Asshats
          (X) Asshats
          (X) Asshats
          (X) Asshats
          (X) Asshats
          (X) Technically illiterate politicians
          (X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people in general
          (X) Outlook
          (X) Asshats

        and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

          (X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown funny
          (X) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
          ( ) Incompatibility with open source or open source licenses
          (X) unfunny jokes do nothing to solve the problem
          (X) Temporary/one-line jokes are cumbersome
          ( ) I don't want the government thinking your lame
          (X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

        Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

          (X) Sorry dude, but that is simply unfunny.
          (X) Once you go OMGPonies! you can never go back.
          (X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
          (X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
          (X) What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this site is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

    • Please, sir, may I have another (achievement)?

    • Okay great! I'm here. What did I unlock by the achievement? Do I get a new Submit button that flashes up Hot Grits and Natalie Portman?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by OK PC (857190)

          I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, and from this side only! The flight of a half-man, half-bird. Dinosaurs nuzzling their young in pastures where strip-malls should be. Cookies on dowels. All those moments lost in time; gone like eggs off a hooker's stomach. Time to die.

  • There is no good reason for tons and tons of information in news articles. This boils everything down to the essentials and puts it into a format that everyone can understand. Good for you The Guardian! /joke
  • This post seems legit ;-)

    • It's actually pretty plausible. Here in Seattle one of our largest and oldest newspapers, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, just ended its print operation and is scaling back to be an exclusively digital operation.

      But then it got into the twitter bit and I realized it was an april fools joke.

  • Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

    by Em Emalb (452530) <ememalbNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday April 01 2009, @09:56AM (#27417379) Homepage Journal

    Since I have the attention span of woah, Britney Spears just ate an entire bowl of rusty nails on live TV.

    What was I saying? Oh, right. As I was saying, if cars continue to run on haha, nice bewbs! then we'll definitely need to see improvement in the White House.

  • It's about time these lazy journalists got with the times.
    • Of course, moving to a form of media which encourages short posts is a really good way to get rid of lazy journalists...

  • Arrg twitter this twitter that. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 01 2009, @09:57AM (#27417399)
    Twitter: Micro Blogging Service
    Tweet: To send a message on twitter.
    Twat: Any journalist that reports on/about twitter.

    • Re:Arrg twitter this twitter that. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by slyn (1111419) <ozzietheowl@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 01 2009, @10:44AM (#27418537)

      The maker of Twitter must be laughing hysterically now as he swims in vast seas of money and shits 17 carat gold logs, thinking back to that fateful day where he first came upon the idea for his website...

      Twitter Guy: EUREKA!1
      Some Guy: What?
      TG: I just got a great idea for a website, users upload what they are doing or thinking at any given moment in time for the whole world to see!
      SG: Isn't that just what a facebook status is?
      TG: Hmmmm, we can limit the number of characters people use to only 140, concise and it will keep the server load down so we always have a good uptime!
      SG: Why 140?
      TG: Because its (12 x 12) - 4
      SG: Oooooookay? How do you plan on making money?
      TG: Its just a great idea so venture capitalists will just throw money at our potential.
      SG: .... you sound like a twit.
      TG: BRILLIANT, WE CAN CALL IT TWITTER!1!11

  • R U Sure ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by elcorvax (1395311) <[corvax] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday April 01 2009, @09:58AM (#27417415)
    And are they going to post the news in the Lolcat language ??
  • let's just hope this doesn't mean google will start aggregating tweets

  • and it solves GMG's dispute with Google News [slashdot.org]

  • the good news is tinyurl.com/b5x6e is real. the bad news is it goes to the wikipedia article on WWII--come on guys, how hard would it be to slip a rickroll in there?
  • Instead of publishing via "Tweets", publish on Teats!

    I would definitely subscribe. For the articles of course.

  • Poor April Fools Day (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Azaril (1046456) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @10:02AM (#27417537) Homepage

    You'd think that after the story yesterday [slashdot.org], they would come up with something a little less obvious. The whole premise of the fools joke is to get people to believe it, at least temporarily. How can a paper, who only 24 hours before complained about the lack of funding on the internet, possibly goto an internet only distribution system? I might be getting old, but in my eyes, no april fools joke will ever match up to the seminal BBC prank [bbc.co.uk]. Now to stop those damn kids skateboarding on the sidewalk...

  • Sigh ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by krou (1027572) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @10:04AM (#27417569)
    ... whatever happened to believable April Fools stories? It was a lot more fun when you could really get fooled instead of just being able to discount a story within the first line. (Kids, get off my lawn, too!)
  • A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

    I have to give kudos to the Guardian... it's going to be hard to top this one.

  • Give me waffles and maple syrup any day of the week (side of bacon, please), bluster just doesn't have that same yummy taste.

  • The guardian reporters have been out in force today twittering about the G20 riots - they probably outnumbered the protesters. The technology section twitters here: http://www.twitter.com/guardiantech [twitter.com] or it does when the fail whale isn't showing.

  • Fox News (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brkello (642429) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @11:16AM (#27419221)
    I think this would be a better format for Fox News. I mean really, 140 characters is more than enough for them. "Liberals!" "Socialism!" "Baby killers!" "Obama's recession!" "Tax and Spend!" "Destruction of marriage!" "Easy on terrorists!"

    Heck, I think that pretty much sums up all of Fox News right now. I guess they can just shut down and open up the air ways for some real journalism. How about a 24/7 Daily Show channel?

    • Re:"Waffle & Bluster"?! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aristotle-dude (626586) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @10:03AM (#27417551)
      *Whoosh* He was a great man. He was a preacher and a political activist who played a pivotal role in the history of the US but I think he would be disturbed by this "worship" of him given that he was a humble man of faith. You act like someone was disrespecting a revered prophet or something. It's a joke. You are supposed to laugh. For crying out loud, christians can take light hearted jokes and even tell them to each other but this cult of personality surrounding King Jr seems to have no sense of humour.

      • *Whoosh* He was a great man. He was a preacher and a political activist who played a pivotal role in the history of the US but I think he would be disturbed by this "worship" of him given that he was a humble man of faith. You act like someone was disrespecting a revered prophet or something. It's a joke. You are supposed to laugh.

        Until I read this post, I didn't get that it was a joke, but now I understand that you're right. Unfortunately British humour (spelling it in the British way for all you Brits out there) doesn't always translate well for Americans. Honestly, I can now understand that it's a joke, but I don't think it's particularly funny.

        Yes, I do like Monty Python and Rowan Atkinson's various projects, but as a general rule I'm not sure I'd say that just being British means you have a leg up in the funny department

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Cube Steak (1520237)

          Until I read this post, I didn't get that it was a joke,

          So you didn't get that a line in a story that is clearly an April Fools joke is a joke? Were you born with no sense of humor or did you have it removed later in life?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by tnk1 (899206)

            I don't know about you, but I was completely fooled by the "OMG Hitler invades Poland" headline.

            Must be that dry British humour I keep hearing about.

        • Re:"Waffle & Bluster"?! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by DrgnDancer (137700) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @10:48AM (#27418659) Homepage

          You... didn't... realize... Gods I hope you're joking. Please? A 200 year old newspaper announces that it is not only switching to a pure "Twitter" format, but rewriting its entire (200 year old) archive into the same format (On April 1st), and you thought there was the slightest chance it could be serious? I see.

          So I have this bridge in Arizona. It's a really hot buy, but the last customer fell through. Would you be interested? I really need to unload this thing, so I'll be quite generous with the terms.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by benwiggy (1262536)

      I guess we think more highly of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. in the states.

      In the UK, we think so highly of Dr. King that it is clearly absurd and comic to suggest that his speeches are full of waffle and bluster.

      It's almost as if the writer of the article doesn't expect to be taken seriously.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by milas (988484)

      I might have bought it if the story had been about The Sun, or The Dail Wail, though.

      Yeah, but those papers aren't actually clever.

    • That was actually my favorite line of the story:

      Most now offer Twitter feeds of major breaking news headlines, while the Daily Mail recently pioneered an iPhone application providing users with a one-click facility for reporting suspicious behaviour by migrants or gays.

      Utterly believable.

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