Crikey

For better or worse, social networking service Twitter, and the minutiae of what goes on there, has become a mainstay of the mainstream media this year.

Crikey itself is hardly immune to the lure of the odd article about who’s tweeting what and why, and Lord knows how many hours the editorial team collectively waste each week sharing ROFLs and lulz with the world in 140-character form.

Sure, its importance may be a little overhyped, but with celebrities, politicians, corporations and commentators all jumping into the fray, there are plenty of newsworthy stories to be found in the Twittersphere.

Kevin Rudd eating a biscuit isn’t one of them.

On Tuesday, the “KevinPM Team” tweeted on Kev’s official Twitter stream:

Few pictures from PM’s visit to the Murray Bridge Bakery on the way to Health Reform Forum

Attached was a picture from Kev’s official Flickr page:

Perhaps it’s worth a brief giggle over the way he’s earnestly applying himself to the task of eating pastries, or that he’s a bit of a bogan for being a cappuccino drinker, but surely there’s not much more to say about it.

But try telling that to the Australian Associated Press. Never ones to shy away from a journalistic challenge, one of its talented hacks got five paragraphs out of the Kevin-Rudd-eats-and-tweets-a-biscuit story:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is tackling the big issues  — he’s posted a picture of himself eating a biscuit on Twitter.

Just after US President Barack Obama twittered a sober update about the progress of health care reform, Mr Rudd posted details of his trip to the Murray Bridge Bakery in South Australia.

The PM, dressed in a suit and sitting on a plastic chair, is getting stuck into a cappuccino and what appears to be an iced biscuit or pastry in the photograph.

He is wearing an expression of concentration on his face as he breaks the bakery item in two.

“Few pictures from PM’s visit to the Murray Bridge Bakery on the way to Health Reform Forum,” his Twitter entry read, which was posted to his 650,000 followers by his staff.

Tackling the big issues indeed.

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