erin mccann |Verified account

With apologies to Taylor, who is great, I want to pick at this line of thinking a bit, because i think it's dangerous and simplistic in its own way: https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1083793172520673284 …

I don't actually think excelling in Instagram 101 should be a requirement for being a politics reporter. They're busy enough as it is.

I think two things are simultaneously true: a) we as an industry undervalue the importance of ONLINE THINGS, and b) we also suck at explaining the translation of those things to normal people (see: point a again, because we undervalue...)

I said this the other day, and it remains true — and i meant ALL of us in that grouping, the politics folks, the online folks, the casual tweeters. We don't have any way to handle the firehose of online we're walking into.https://twitter.com/mccanner/status/1081253163594903552 …

Many of us live far more online than our readers do. It's our job to help them navigate and weigh the online — while respecting the online as just as real, which as an industry we still don't do very well.

I don't disagree with @TaylorLorenz that we all need to be smarter and more careful about how we report around viral stuff, and how misinformation takes seed. I just think that's everyone's responsibility, not just political reporters.