>It always amazes me that normal people like journalists still use such a strange website.
Well a lot of it is because it makes content production so damn easy. Take a real example which reached the BBC front page a while back [1].
The entire story is :
1. A Korean actress was cast for some role in something Harry Potter related.
2. Some people on Twitter were unhappy about this
3. JK Rowling defended the casting (also on Twitter).
4. Then there's some mention of some other story about Dumbledore not being shown as gay.
5. A couple of still photos + a clip from a movie
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45666350
OK, this is entertainment "news" so it's a pretty low bar but the reason this stuck in my mind was what a non-story this
all was - even by the standards of the subject matter. There's not even an attempt to gauge whether these complaints represented a decent chunk (or the majority) of the Harry Potter fanbase - it's just a quote from a couple of random people annoyed about it. Imagine if national broadcasters could get away with quoting random people they overheard in the pub and this would constitute a story.
Of course, the thing giving the story some legitimacy is that Rowling has responded to this alleged controversy. And that's the other main reason (which is kind of reinforcing) - enough companies/famous people use Twitter as their method of communicating with the public (and by extension the press) that the press continue to use it.