• Twitter first gained popularity in 2008 and 2009.
• Twitter replaced newsrooms and emerged as a rival.
• Numerous issues have been caused by the reliance.

Few will lose as much if Twitter goes away as journalists, who have become dependent on its limitless sources and quick reports despite the risks and distortions they pose.

Since billionaire Elon Musk took over the site last month and started letting go a sizable number of employees, there has been feverish chatter about the platform's impending doom. Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, however, claimed that the majority of journalists 'can't go.' It plays a crucial role in their work, in fact. In 2008 and 2009, Newman was employed by the BBC when Twitter first gained popularity. 

However, Twitter also emerged as a rival, taking the place of newsrooms as the public's go-to source for breaking news during terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and other fast-moving stories. Journalists realised their role would change and would focus more on contextualising and confirming the news rather than always being the ones to break it. 

Additionally, it meant that journalists had to be present when politicians and celebrities made announcements. Perhaps most infamously, this included Donald Trump's dreaded early-morning and late-night tweets, which caused hundreds of journalists to lose sleep throughout his presidency.

 According to Mathew Ingram, a digital media specialist at the Columbia Journalism Review, 'paying attention just to Twitter tends to alter the way that many people, including journalists, see the world.'

Journalists have faced a 'vast torrent of disinformation and persecution,' yet he hopes they have become astute enough to counter the inaccuracies. Nevertheless, despite all the commotion surrounding Musk's erratic presidency, many think the site will endure.

For the record, according to sociologist Stephen Barnard of Butler University in the United States, 'I don't believe it's all that probable that Twitter will shut down anytime soon.' But he added that journalists had legitimate reason to worry about it going missing. 

According to Barnard, 'they would lose access to what is for many a very vast, strong, and diverse social network... (and) (also) a good source of prestige and professional identity.' I'm not sure where they would go because there isn't a real heir apparent in that position, he continued. 

The upside, according to Ingram, is that it might encourage a return to 'more conventional ways of researching and reporting.' He continued, 'Perhaps that would be a good thing.