Today, over 200 million people are using Twitter, making the audience for a journalist seem endless with just one social network. With the New York Times coming in first place for newspaper with the most twitter followers as of July 2013, their followers continue to grow. Because of the immediacy that comes with it, “Twitter [is] amplifying the spread of news, not replacing it.” Says Scot Hacker, Ashwin Seshagiri of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. With this revolution in full swing, having a Twitter account and tweeting from it, is on track to potentially becoming the next best thing.
While Twitter not only helps to increase the amount of readers per newspaper, it increases the range of audience as well. Teens and college students are seemingly all about the Twitter world, (and Internet in general) over newspapers and print. Yet they are not the only ones; adults are on their way to becoming at least half of the current Twitter population. Slowly, the generation of print is becoming less attractive compared to the amount of information we can obtain over the Internet, even if it’s just by following the New York Times on Twitter.
The growth and use of Twitter is exactly why newspapers and journalists have adopted this method of social media. When looking at this graph of the amount of followers the top 25 newspapers have, its clear that twitter has become the “new thing” for newspapers around the world.
http://www.neilfoote.com/social-media-newspaper-tracker/
Many believe that twitter is for teens and college students, but within the past year, adults age 30-49 have the largest increase in twitter users.
http://mediaconfidential.blogspot.com/2013/08/twitter-use-rises-across-us-age-groups.html
Besides Twitter being an easy to use social media site that requires a very small amount of upkeep, it’s a fast, easy way to get information out there to a very large audience. Having only 140 characters to get the point across, it’s a social media that is appealing to just about everyone. With the option of news right at your fingertips in short, concise excerpts, Twitter is sure to grow and continue, “amplifying” the world of journalism.
-Erin Geyen
Beginning Journalism 
This is a very nice post and I find it almost similar to mine which was about how social media affects sports journalists today. Yes I do believe most of the people using twitter and social media today is the younger crowd, but a good majority of journalists and adults are beginning to use it more and more everyday!