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By all accounts, one of the great benefits of Twitter has always been real time access to information. That made it a vital platform for journalists and news outlets seeking not just a live feed for their coverage but also to build their brands as immediate sources for reporting and commentary. As political reporter Peter Hamby wrote in a 2013 paper for the Harvard Shorenstein Center, for better or worse, Twitter forever changed the news business as a result.

Now, two years since Twitter’s board first agreed to sell the company to Elon Musk, reliable information is disappearing from the site as more and more journalists and newsrooms have reduced their presence, or outright disappeared from the…