Life after Twitter: Where do California news junkies go now?

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Just a few years ago, people following California public policy news were the beneficiaries of what was in retrospect an online media renaissance: Joining traditional legacy media, new sites like CalMatters and Politico California Playbook offered greatly expanded capitol coverage, and a whole series of newsletters and other aggregators devoted to California government and politics made tracking news easier.

All of the above were augmented and amplified by Twitter, which emerged as an essential tool of newsgathering. The platform offered a unique and very robust minute-by-minute conversation, often driven by elected officials and other newsmakers. No one benefitted from this lively Twittersphere more than political reporters who used the platform for sourcing, following breaking news and for sharing their stories as soon as they were published.

However, in the year or so since billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X), the platform has changed, algorithmically and functionally, but also because many once-active users have either abandoned the platform or greatly reduced their engagement. As a tool for reporters, X is a shadow of what Twitter once was.

The fade of X has encouraged a rise of competitors, including Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon, but so far none has proved the perfect fit for journalism that Twitter seemed to be. Where do California political junkies get their news now? Is the diminishment of X driving traffic back to curated news aggregators like Rough and Tumble and the multitude of California politics newsletters? We asked Lara Korte of Politico to talk about the decline of the platform, how it came to be such an essential part of newsgathering and how and where to stay up-to-date on political news in the wake of X’s dysfunction. Plus: Who had the Worst Week In CA Politics?

SHOW NOTES

1:36 How useful is Twitter (X) now?

4:07 Game changer: John Myers and the CA Budget all-nighter

5:09 Other options?

5:48 January 6

7:10 Hashtag

8:35 Blue checks

9:19 Cheering the demise of Twitter

9:42 Rough and Tumble

11:29 Removing the headlines

13:01 Aggregation and curation

14:40 “Rule of Three”

15:45 The Roundup and Politico California Playbook

17:46 Following trends

20:00 The value of non news sources

21:31 Tweet of the Day

22:13 A plethora of newsletters

24:33 Calpeek?

25:13 Capitol Morning Report

26:27 What happens to Twitter?

28:58 MySpace

34:09 Please tweet something funny

36:10 RSS feed

37:14 #WWCA