What Twitter means to me

I joined Twitter on my first trip to the US, in 2007 at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. And I remember thinking it sucked. I had no connections other than the conference channel – which was tweeting  basically nothing. That sucked.

Segway (does it have a ue?): I’m a tertiary level teacher of marketing and journalism in Oz, and every Christmas break (5 weeks long) I commit myself to a private research project. That year I committed myself to social media – particularly, Twitter. And I got back on board.

With a vengeance.

I joined @STUB and met other Sydney based Twitterers in real life. I extended those relationships online and people all over the world are now part of a network I’m happily claiming to be my friends. Not even in air quotes.

So my summer research has now, 2 yrs later, become a network of over 1650 people. Many of whom I know care about me just as they do other friends in their life. And if you are, at this point, thinking “is she going to talk about me”, then you’re one of the people I feel most close to.

Far from making me a desperate online loser, I sincerely believe online communities are the families and friends of the future. Durkheim – I love looking at your crap, but you’re a bit wrong. We are distanced, but we are strong.

To all my friends who started with Twitter, I am so grateful to have you. You have changed my life for the better. What a great summer project you were. What an amazing present and future you offer.

Thanks.

The future of print journalism is social

Traditional print media’s attempts to embrace an online presence has been lacklustre, and in fact has helped kill their brands.

Most print MSM have incorporated blogs as part of their delivery mechanism. They have made their existing, print-trained reporters produce content for a medium they are not familiar with. It’s like having a trained print journalist produce television. There are differences. Traditional journalists who are already overworked due to company lay-offs have had varying degrees of ethics and purpose when producing content for their blogs. Most appear to not really know why they’re doing it other than ‘to show we’re in that space’. And because of the time involved, the overall quality of everything they do can suffer.

When blogs are put up by traditional media, the masthead appears as the banner to the blog. Anything produced under that masthead reflects on the brand. For a media brand, if it’s not journalism or well produced, that’s damaging. MSM has treated the internet as though it’s a massive printing press and anything and everything can run. At last, there’s no restrictions of cost of paper, distribution, etc. Stories which perhaps shouldn’t be written or run are given a second chance online.

Recognising the Web 2.0 social aspects, print media has incorporated Reader Comments sections in their online brands which allow all manner of diatribe, ill-informed opinion and complete drivel run for pages and pages – often longer than the stories themselves. Most of this ‘reader comment’ would never have seen the light of day if it were offered to print entities, but due to lack of staff, it runs away with itself unless flagged by another reader. I would suggest if it’s not fit for print under your masthead then it’s not fit for online publication under your masthead either – and as news organisations of many years’ standing, you have a responsibility to control these comments before your readers – particularly on hard news. By making the reader comments section open slather, it’s as if a peanut butter brand opened the lid and said “got anything you want to add? Sure thing, just chuck it in there.”

Online should be giving print media the opportunity to give readers a more in-depth experience with the type of quality reporting often limited by cost of paper and distribution. It should be expanding their brands. All stories should be including internal links to sources, further information, etc that are well researched and allow the reader a complete experience.

Print media believes writing for the web means writing all the information in a shorter way and presenting it well. Often simply repurposing content. For example, J-schools train up and coming reporters in how the eye looks at a screen, and gets them to rewrite a print story for the web. That’s kinda like getting a print reporter to rewrite their story for tv. It’s garbage. Great print media, in adopting an online presence should be all about giving extra information through the links they provide. It’s about being truly transparent. And in a Web 2.0 environment, it’s about being social.

Being a social media entity does enable everyone to be part of your efforts. Web 2.0 is community. But when you add that masthead to the top of your online efforts, then you have a responsibility to the survival of your professional brand as a business as well.

If you want to use Web 2.0, you need to do so responsibly to help your medium survive. Recognise that you have a community of readers who regularly want to respond. Why not approach those people to see if they’d like to have their own blogs rather than sullying up every story you run? Only add reader comments if you can moderate them, and only to particular stories. Invite people to provide additional links rather than simply their opinion! Identify exactly what it is that is driving you to make your print journalists write blogs too, when you have a whole community of people out there? There are plenty of ways to be effective in Web 2.0. It’s social. It’s about people you don’t employ. And they’re a community who could add value and credibility to your brand when you control the infrastructure within which they contribute.

If your masthead isn’t that important to you, then you deserve what’s happening to you.

Why you shouldn’t read print

Since moving to Boulder I’ve actually started picking up the local free newspaper each day, but I’m over it. Why? I read it online and believe it’s the cheapest, easiest way of helping the environment – even easier than all that other recycling we do.

In Australia to get a paper you need to visit a newsagent, or the train station – basically have a human interaction. But here in the US, there are a plethora of newsboxes (I dunno what they’re actually called) all around the place – everywhere – carrying an assortment of daily newspapers, catalogues, classifieds. Almost anything! Many of them are free, and those that aren’t are cheap to buy. The Daily Camera is only 50c (the Sunday edition is $1). You put the money in the slot and it lets you pull the handle open to grab your paper. While in Sydney we have about 4 generally available mass media newspapers, here there are at least twice that.

This seems great – it’s so convenient, there’s never a line for the paper, and it’s so cheap it’s easy to pick it up to read on the bus or whatever. And on a Sunday morning, you don’t have to make conversation.

That’s the big difference. The quality of news in these papers is shocking. The Colorado Daily is really crap. The writing is complete drivel. The topics are ridiculous. There is no real news. The best part is the comics. And even then, whomever is editing it sometimes runs the same comic two days or more straight. The Boulder Weekly, another free paper, is a bit better, but really – it’s a good thing they’re free. Nobody in their right mind would pay for this crap. The writing is grammatically incorrect, badly edited – it looks like a 4th grade paper. It’s simply not professional in any sense of the word, let alone ‘journalism’. Sort of like a cut down, free version of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

But that gets me on to ‘good quality’ print – you know, the stuff you expect to pay for. The real journalism.

The Daily Camera and The Rocky Mountain News, which are like Sydney’s Daily Telegraph in the ‘real’ sense, have been running subscription campaigns. Get it cheaper and you’ll save! Big frigging deal. I can read both of them online… for free!

And there’s nothing left of it when I’m done. No papers laying around to put in the recycling.

That’s the biggest deal of all – the environmental cost. The New York Times, one of the most respected newspapers in the world, is also available online. Consider this: 314 acres of trees are cut down for every single edition of the Sunday New York Times. 

314 acres. Gone. Because people like something tangible to hold with their coffee on Sundays; and then they chuck it out come Monday morning. 

For a world of people who are becoming more aware of global warming and all the associated issues of environmental catastrophes, surely we owe ourselves and our kids those 314 acres.

Join me. Demand great journalism from your traditional mastheads, but demand it online. Leave the paper on the trees where it belongs.