Twitter Beefs Are Now Front Page News in The Boston Globe

In an amazing feat of technological prowess, The Boston Globe has embedded tweets on the front page of its newspaper. Well, not exactly.
The front page of the February 4 2016 Boston Globe.
The Boston Globe/Newseum

In an amazing feat of technological prowess, The Boston Globe has embedded tweets on the front page of its newspaper today.

Well, okay, they didn't actually figure out a way to make JavaScript work on paper. But printing tweets on the front page of a major US newspaper is no small nod to the influence Twitter exerts over media and politics today.

The tweets are included besides two stories about sparring candidates in the 2016 election, notably the latest Twitter beefs between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton as well as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Twitter has been one of the primary ways that candidates have sought to get their message out on social media, skipping traditional media and presenting their own narrative (and spin) directly to voters during the campaign. That's nothing new—and news organizations (including WIRED) embed candidates' tweets in online stories all the time.

Now that disintermediation has come full circle, with candidates' tweets now appearing on dead trees. Welcome to newspapers—and, well yes, presidential campaigning—in 2016.