Trudeau Mocks Journos for Overtwittering

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau has been lampooning TV journalists for decades in Doonesbury, so it’s natural he would satirize their latest folly: excessive Twittering. Roland Hedley, Trudeau’s fictitious TV journo, has become an avid Twitter user both in print and in the real world, where @Roland_Hedley boasts 2,900 followers. Trudeau recently talked to Mediabistro about the abuse of Twitter as a “personal broadcasting system.”

“Look, all of us are narcissists to some degree, but most find it embarrassing enough to at least try to hide it,” Trudeau said. “What Twitter and its social-media cousins do is disable inhibition. We expect narcissism from our movie stars and politicians and teenagers, but it’s a little surprising to encounter so many otherwise personally modest journalists oblivious to how they’re presenting.” (More Twitter stories.)