Paul Dacre may not be troubled by calling Hugh Grant mendacious, or five Lawrence suspects murderers, but even the great bear of Fleet Street can be scared. All right, scared is a bit of an implausible sounding word in the Dacre context, but there was one subject that was on his mind enough to for him to make a special plea to Lord Justice Leveson at the end of his second session down at the high court. "If the mainstream media are unable to address news stories that are freely available elsewhere, we will look increasingly irrelevant especially to younger people," the Mail editor-in-chief observed. Which may sound odd for a man whose newspaper has just become the world's most popular online (what will Rupert Murdoch think of that?) but then it is not other newspapers that are the competition. It's Twitter.
Last week was the week some parts of the mainstream media decided Twitter was a competitor. Sky News and the BBC – never far apart when something breaks – both decided it was time to assert some grip. Sky News reporters can only tweet breaking news (unless they are in court) by going through the news desk, while BBC News hacks have to break their news via a BBC service first. In a way, it is remarkable that it took so long for the broadcasters to notice; unfortunately now they have done so it will make no difference to Twitter news as plenty of other journalists are willing to plug the gap. And if it means one less person tweeting that Fabio Capello has quit it might even be less irritating too.
Anyway, the competition for broadcasters is no illusion. In the real world not many people watch rolling news. BBC News was watched by 169,000 people between noon and 1pm last Thursday according to Barb data; Sky News by 90,000 over the five-hour period. It is true that Barb does not measure screens in offices, pubs and dentist waiting rooms – so the true viewing figure will be greater, but in the battle for eyeballs Twitter is a serious contender. It is the same too for newspaper websites, even the Daily Mail. A hit news story can attract well over 100,000 readers, but there are only so many of those, and five figures is usually considered a solid measure of success. The beauty of the newspaper formula, of course, is that discrete reading habits all add up, but Twitter can manage larger numbers too.
Once when the England manager resigned, a quote from a star player could have filled an exclusive back page. Now everyone can cut and paste the tweets of Rio Ferdinand – "I think we need an English manager now" – or Wayne Rooney: "Harry Redknapp for me." Rio's Twitter followers amount to 2 million; Rooney's 2.9 million. It doesn't take many characters to get it: Twitter outrates.
No wonder then, Dominic Mohan of the Sun has taken to complaining that the press and social media need to exist on a level regulatory playing field. Imogen Thomas may have turned up to his newspaper with her story, but it was several weeks before the Sun could name Ryan Giggs, long after Twitterati had become enervated breaking the law in sharing his name. Unfortunately it is an unrealistic moment to ask favours.
Yet, whatever Mohan and Dacre may say, or how the BBC and Sky may behave, there seems to be a collective missing of the point. It would be unwise to conclude that Twitter is a competitor; advertisers might notice, preferring to spend money reskinning Rio or Rooney's homepage than elsewhere. Twitter is just the place to break news that won't hold for long: it takes time to file or get to camera. It is not the place for a full report on, say, famine in Darfur. But getting into a popularity contest against Twitter in the struggle for immediacy is exactly the kind of battle that established media will not win.
