Social media as a public service

June 23, 2009 | Social Media, Twitter | No Comments

picture-1611It was striking to see how social, local, and national media interacted in the immediate aftermath of D.C.’s tragic Metro crash yesterday. As news first started to break on blogs like DCist, it was quickly followed by activity in the Twittersphere. Local media rushed to get live shots, and CNN had sent a breaking e-mail only about 15 minutes after the first reports came in.

But even as Twitter links to local media’s video and photos came in droves, the more interesting part of the whole situation wasn’t how Twitter directed viewers to other coverage in mainstream media sites. Rather, the most remarkable part for me was the amount of public service tweeting going on. Has that term been coined yet? I’ll take credit for now.

Even the rarest D.C.-based tweeters in my list of followers were spreading the word: Stay away from the Metro. It seems to me that Twitter was being used to ensure that people knew what had happened, not just for their own knowledge, but to keep people out of the Metro system and make sure a bad situation didn’t get worse. I guess I can’t be certain what each person’s intentions were, but that’s what it looked like to me.

Have there been other notable instances of public service tweeting? I’m sure I missed one. Point it out if you know of any.

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Social media: How much is too much?

June 18, 2009 | Social Media | No Comments

Used under a Creative Commoms license via Gary Hayes

That was the question du jour at the Poynter chat I attended today. I hadn’t participated in one before today, but when I heard about it (via Twitter, of course), it seemed like it’d be a gathering of the top young minds talking about Twitter, Facebook, and the like. It was.

There were plenty of good points made, but guest host Greg Linch had an interesting answer to the one question I asked: With Twitter taking over as the premier social network, how can you still use Facebook to your benefit?

Says Greg:

I think Facebook is still very relevant, but for different reasons. I don’t find it nearly as useful as Twitter on a day-to-day basis, but I think it’s an important long-term tool for keeping in touch with friends and longer-form communication.

A good point indeed. Facebook is the primary way I keep in touch with friends from across the country, and my Twitter habits are much more professionally-based. It does beg the question, though: If Facebook is more of a personal-life app, then what’s the point of a newspaper (or other company) having a fan page? I get my news via Twitter/RSS – an additional redundancy seems a little much.

As for how much is too much, I gotta think it varies person to person. If it distracts you or in any way prevents you from accomplishing your goals in the analog world, then it’s no good. But used as a proper digital tool, it should actually be a boost for professional/personal productivity and advancement. Agreed?

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Get what’s comin’ to ya

June 12, 2009 | Business, Journalism | No Comments

Earlier this week, I came across this brash but probably realistic post on the old guard of journalism and what it might take to finally take the industry into its next phase.

Probably not what most old school newspaper execs want to hear, but this piece has some pretty salient points. Among them:

  • When will these guys learn that paid content is not the way to go? People have gotten news free of charge on the ‘net for more than 10 years. They aren’t about to stop.
  • This one is probably the most difficult one to swallow for many in the biz: “Quality journalism is expensive, and to the extent that it provides a public good, we will find ways to fund it. But top-heavy, poorly run, arrogant-to-the-bitter-end media companies? This is their crisis, not our crisis, and it certainly isn’t about journalism.”

The media landscape is changing (rocket science, I know). I am very confident that in the end, we’ll still get our news – and it’ll be well done. But it’s not going to look like it used to. Whatever newspaper execs used to make, whatever the business model used to look like – they’re not going to make that much and it’s not going to look like that. The sooner the people in charge stop trying to salvage what’s on the way out and just embrace what’s coming, the better they – and we – will be.

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What I Never Knew

June 07, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” – Casablanca, 1941

I’ve never seen that movie. But for some reason, that quote seems applicable right now. Maybe it’s because after learning about cutting edge journalism for three years at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs, working for an award-winning newspaper like The Hatchet and working as a web producer for The Washington Post, I foolishly thought I was in some kind of journalism 2.0 mecca. Where everyone west of the Potomac River still chiseled their front-page stories into flint rock and delivered the paper by horseback.

Exaggeration aside, I learned something over the past two weeks that I never knew: Not only are there A LOT of collegiate journalists out there learning the same things, but they’re talking about it and already branding themselves online as people who know what they’re doing. As you might imagine, that’s a community I want to be a part of.

I’m not sure exactly what form this blog/site will take or where it might go, but I imagine it’ll be a big jumble of musings on journalism, health, life, the interwebz, and how each of those fits together.

And so, I’m hoping this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Between me, my future, and people out there who want to do the same thing.

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