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The Guardian Shifts To Twitter After 188 Years of Ink

Posted by Soulskill on from the save-the-trees dept.

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."

8 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. "Waffle & Bluster"?! by eldavojohn · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.

    I couldn't find anything when googling for "waffle and bluster" aside from this story so I looked up each of the words.

    waffle

    Speech or writing that is vague, pretentious or evasive. Example: "This interesting point seems to get lost a little within a lot of self-important waffle."

    bluster

    Pompous, officious talk.

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

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:"Waffle & Bluster"?! by aristotle-dude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      *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.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    2. Re:"Waffle & Bluster"?! by Cube+Steak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    3. Re:"Waffle & Bluster"?! by DrgnDancer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
  2. Hahaha by Calabacin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This post seems legit ;-)

    --
    How much wood would a woodchopper chop if a woodchopper would chop wood?
  3. Re:Pandora's blog has been opened by AvitarX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Achievement Whore, the new Karma Whore.

    --
    Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
  4. Re:Arrg twitter this twitter that. by MightyDrunken · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I thought to twitter was to talk incessantly about inane crap.
    Oh wait!

    --
    The most dangerous drug
  5. Re:Arrg twitter this twitter that. by slyn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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