Embracing the Social Media, or A Lesson for Journalists
March 20th, 2008 | by Brad King |
I’ve written quite a bit about Twitter in the newsroom today. It’s an obvious addition that should appear near immediately — and by that, I mean sometime in the last 15 months since it’s been released.
The instant, mobile, social networking software is absolutely the best way to get live, up-to-the-second updates about news, something that print newspapers deem necessary in a modern world.
When we were meeting with Cincinnati’s Gannet affiliate, the Enquirer, the Editor-in-Chief continually rambled on about breaking news and traffic. The two biggest drivers of traffic at the site. And he was right — in part. What drives Web traffic today (and what will always drive traffic locally) is traffic and breaking news.
So, of course, they have adopted Twitter and other outreach mobile networks to deliver the news to readers.
Uh…
Nevermind. I don’t mean to single out my hometown paper — after all, I don’t see any other news organization embracing this new phenomenon — but it’s indicitive of an overarching sense of entitlement and defensiveness that media companies aren’t embracing Social Media.
Technology is intimidating, and grissled reporters don’t like to show weakness. They don’t want to expose what they don’t know. Hell, I don’t like to expose what I don’t know.
The universe, as Stephen Crane told us, doesn’t care about our insecurities.
That’s okay, though, because there is a great Twitter site, BreakingNewsOn, where I received news about the earthquake in China 30 minutes before it hit the news wires or traditional media outlets.
Live breaking news and developing stories… 24/7. Your most credible Twitter news source. First in online breaking news!
The site is part of The News Wire, which began simply as a Twitter feed from journalists around the world. Now it’s a poorly constructed site as well. No worries. The effort is what counts.
I didn’t visit CNN to find out what happened until a full 6 hours after I first read reports on Twitter.
Six hours.
And even then, I didn’t read CNN’s story. I simply cruised Google News et al to see if the headlines matched the Twitters. Honestly, I wasn’t all that interested in what the traditional media had to say. I’d already seen a bunch of news from people on the ground.
