I don’t follow Jake Sherman on Twitter or subscribe to Punchbowl news — I’m working hard to track the news that I do — but I still found this Washington Post profile of him fascinating. Sherman covers Capitol Hill in true social media fashion, constantly updating his feed with small (some might say often-meaningless) “microscoops”.
What’s a microcsoop?
Sherman, a 5-foot-6, cherub-faced 37-year-old, has made it his business to become that guy on the Hill, where the currency is micro-scoops — news about extremely incremental developments that could be stale within hours. What this has brought him is a reputation as a primary narrator of major events and minor subplots driving the news in Congress, from Republican infighting over who should get to be Speaker of the House to the question of whether a member of Congress pulled the fire alarm before a crucial vote. In addition to his outlet’s newsletter dispatches, Sherman’s play-by-play of various Hill dramas go out to more than 420,000 followers on X, formerly known as Twitter — and into the bloodstream of Official Washington. These posts often have overtones of urgency.
Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?
As it happens, this profile of Sherman reminded me a lot of two other recent journalistic profiles — both involving Shams Charania, who covers the NBA in much the same fashion that Sherman covers Congress.
Charania drinks only two cups a day but exudes caffeination; his legs shook constantly under the table, and I lost track of how often he reached for his phone, which had 125 unheard voice-mails, 72,443 unread emails, and an unceasing stream of texts, many of which he responded to as they came in. He averages 18 hours of screen time a day and was proud of how far that number had dipped on a recent vacation to Portugal with his family, even if he had continued tweeting minor news — “Skal Labissiere has agreed to a partially guaranteed one-year deal with the Sacramento Kings” — throughout the weeklong trip.
And the Washington Post, again, on the “Shams-Woj” rivalry:
When they do talk, journalists and NBA officials are unequivocal that the scoop wars of the modern NBA are controlled by Woj, a 54-year-old newspaper veteran from Connecticut, and his former protégé, Shams, 29, who launched his career from his parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs.
Their dynamic has become a fascination of the league, with fans lining up to cheer them on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and to keep score of their performances on the internet and even in NBA locker rooms. Paul George to the Clippers? Woj. Rudy Gobert has covid? Shams. Kevin Durant to the Warriors? Woj again. Both boast millions of X followers (6 million for Woj, 2 million for Shams). Both are recognized by every NBA fan with an X account.
This … also sounds exhausting.
Getting back to the Sherman profile, you won’t be surprised to learn that his real passion and desire was originally to cover sports. He fell into covering the corridors of power, a job many young journalists would kill for, almost on accident.
I’m old enough to remember working at a newspaper where the editors once debated whether it was worth putting news of a breaking hostage situation online right away or whether to save it for the next morning’s paper, where it would have real value. I’m also old enough to remember — as the digital editor of another outlet — asking journalists to promote their articles on Twitter and being told (I will never, ever forget this) that my suggestion was “gauche.”
And I’m old enough to remember, that same year at that same outlet, covering a transit strike in part by covering what people were saying about their broken commutes on Twitter — and being admonished by a higher editor that I wasn’t doing real journalism.
Those were the days, eh? But it wasn’t that long ago.
The ever-quickening pace of online news comes for us all, is what I’m saying, and maybe it’s my turn.
But I still wonder if the world of microscoops — of sending and receiving information in bite-sized chunks that might be utterly meaningless a few minutes from now, or might only have meaning in that you sent your nugget five minutes before the other guy sent his nugget — renders us unable to see the big picture, to process what all the microscoops taken together might actually mean.
Over the weekend, Ezra Klein wrote about the new “tech optimism” manifesto from Marc Andreessen, with an observation that gets at the dynamic I’m getting at here: “It is hard to read Andreessen’s manifesto, with its chopped-up paragraphs and its blunt jabs of thought delivered for maximum engagement and polarization, and not feel that Andreessen now reflects the medium in which he has made his home: X. He doesn’t just write in the way the medium rewards. He increasingly seems to think in its house style, too.”
So I have to wonder: What, truly is the value of the microscoop? A common theme of the profiles both of Sherman and Shams is that both men are accused of, perhaps, having relationships that are too close to their sources, and that those close relationships — ostensibly in the service of providing news — end up shaping the news to suit the needs of those sources.
Nothing new there. Journalists and sources are often using each other, and have been forever. That’s not a social media microscoop thing.
What is relatively new, though, is the unending pressure to Always Be On, to spend 18 hours a day by the pool checking texts and emails so you don’t miss out on a microscoop. It makes it hard to step back and ask what it all means. It probably makes it easier for powerful people to flood the zone with shit. And so far, nobody has really made the case for why microscoops are useful to anybody who isn’t inside power circles.
Maybe it’s just really entertaining.
A very important collection of insights.
Your final sentence is on the mark. It’s junk food journalism. There’s a role for it, and it’s fun to read, but it’s not very satisfying.
Also, I can’t believe your editor admonished you for doing actual reporting during the transit strike. Sheesh.