I shared this even though it's a terrible article. Take this:

I asked a number of journalists whose job it is to be attacked by people online, and they said they simply don’t respond. An editor at The New Yorker said, “The rule about engaging is that you should never engage.” A former Gawker employee said a mantra at the company is to, “Never complain, never explain.” A co-worker at The New York Times told me, “Don’t feed the trolls.” And another said that angry tweets are simply “spitballs on a battleship.”

Journalists

Should not

Be writing

OPINION PIECES.

The problem here is that the discussion isn't even touching on fact vs. opinion. It's using the weight of the "battleship" of blue-blood media (plus Gawker - fuck you, NYT) and acting as if

Gaza, Israel, Justin Bieber, Orlando Bloom, Jay Z and Beyoncé, the N.S.A., President Obama or any other esoteric topic

are all things that can be discussed in the same way on the same forums.

Think about that for a minute. The Gray Lady has sanctioned a sentence in which Gaza, Justin Bieber, and the NSA are separated by commas as part of a list of like things.

D'you remember when an organization like the NYT existed to provide facts about Gaza? How contextualization was something for the Opinion page while everything else was information gathering and dissemination? But now "President Obama" is "any other esoteric topic" to go along with Orlando Bloom? Meanwhile, they suggest the best way out of a Twitter war is email. That's like interrupting a debate in the public square to go pass a mash note to the guy on the other podium. Not only is it thoroughly aberrant behavior, but it completely misses the object of the discussion. And really - when the object of the discussion is "prove someone else wrong about Gaza in 140 characters or less, WOPR had the right of it - "the only winning move is not to play."

Let's also stand back for a minute and note the day that the "lead technology writer for the Bits blog" on the New York Times took social media advice from Gawker.

"being sued by the accident liability insurance company it tried to get to cover its legal costs when it was sued by Hulk Hogan for posting a videotape of him having sex with his friend’s wife" GAWKER.

But then, he "asked a number of journalists whose job it is to be attacked by people online,"

That's dangerously close to the definition of "jester" or "fool", not "journalist."

And it's about there that I start to wonder if the problem isn't "social media" but "media."