Did you know that any taxi driver in any city on earth is able to sum up the mood of his entire nation on cue with a single pithy yet heartfelt quote? It's lucky, since every foreign correspondent in the world (especially Thomas Friedman) bases his or her understanding of a country on what a taxi driver says. It's the classic easy quote. But now that old misguided trope may be dying! It's being overtaken by something even worse: the Twitter "hypergrapevine." Just what journalism needs, more lazy quote-whoring from a voluble unrepresentative minority!
Twittering toward Bethlehem
Sorry, couldn't help but pun on top of Gawker's headline pun: "Tweeting towards Gomorrah" (though "towards" isn't AP style ... yeah). Anyway, the "everyday person on the street" quote doesn't seem to be in any danger of being replaced by the Twitterers—but who knows?