This contains vital information, yes, but @tombrokaw has nothing to do with the real Tom Brokaw, the NBC news lifer. The real Tom Brokaw, it turns out, has no Twitter account and no Facebook account, he tells the Poynter Institute in an interview. The real Tom Brokaw is holding tight to the bygone age when we still cherished our privacy. The real Tom Brokaw is really scared of this social networking stuff. 

"I have too many invasions of my privacy as it is," he told Poynter. "I'm thinking about just signing up so I can share things with my granddaughters a little more, but I worry I'll read things on their Facebook that will unnerve me."

Yes, Tom, those terrible pictures of us that we can't remove from Facebook are unnerving! Take those awful things down, "friends." But his thoughts on this crazy "Twitter" thing that's got the kids in a tizzy makes him seem, well, a bit out of touch. 

As for Twitter? He doesn't believe it's taken form yet journalistically. "I don't get Twitter," Brokaw said. "I know that it's very popular and that it's a quick way of getting a text blast out, so to speak, but an awful lot of it seems to be... just stuff that fills air." 

Ah, so that's what all those things on my Twitter feed are: "text blasts, so to speak." We can't wait to get on Twitter and go fill the air with some texts blasts, so to speak — even if Tom Brokaw won't see them.

Well, at least @tombrokaw will. Whoever that dude is.

 nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234