The social media hurricane

Here’s how old I am: When I wanted to make a strong impression in accepting my first full time job, in 1972, I sent a telegram. To me, the means of communication symbolized urgency and importance. Today urgency and importance are increasingly signaled through social media, as the convergence of social and news media speed along.

My teenaged children have never sent nor received a telegram. They rarely talk on the phone or send emails, preferring to text friends’ cell phones or, in my son’s case, through game communications in World of Warcraft. He knows many of his friends will be there, just as my daughter knows a lot of dialogue among her classmates is going on through Facebook.

I now check Twitter a couple of times a day, LinkedIn every day or two and Facebook when it alerts me, for signs of what my friends and colleagues are up to.

The widespread adoption of social media in personal and business communication is now working its way into the news ecosystem, with Hurricane Gustav being the latest example.

I picked three news organizations (formerly known as newspapers) with good track records I knew were well-positioned to follow developments, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Biloxi Sun Herald and Austin American-Statesman. In addition to print and online coverage, each fielded a Twitter presence. New Orleans used its ongoing Twitter account, NOLAnews; Biloxi established FollowGustav and Austin created TrackingGustav.

The advantage of Twitter over the Web is that virtually everyone with a cellphone purchased in the past few years has the technology to receive instant Twitter updates, 140-character bursts  of information sometimes, but not always, linked to a longer Web entry. 

Even the Red Cross provided hurricane information through Twitter. The advantages lay in the instant and portable nature of Twitter and its near universal availability.

Check out the the great interview on Poynter about NPR’s efforts to use social media in Gustav coverage  http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=2&aid=149732

At the intersection of news media and social media

Media intellectuals Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Howard Owens and Howard Weaver sold me on Twitter because of their skills putting it to serious purpose. They’re masters of blogging and longer forms, but I found them just as provocative in 140 characters. 

Then The Wichita Eagle’s Ron Sylvester demonstrated the news value of the form, with his adroit Kansas.com Twitter reports on trials in progress.

It all came together for me last night in a blessedly smoke-free barroom in downtown Wichita, where folks whose employers include newspapers, branding agencies, non-profits, a church and a university came together for a Wichita Tweetup. It evolved organically around a long, noisy table as we got acquainted and exchanged tales of the D life, as L. Kelly reports here.

Ron Sylvester courtroom tweet

 I said Twittering from the courtroom would get even more interesting when five or six people — not all of them professional journalists — are covering the same trial and you can read their posts as one continuous stream. Ron Sylvester, who has been getting national attention for his Tweets, said it will get even more interesting when family members of the defendant and victim join the Twitterers.

I don’t fear the day when Ron and other professional journalists are fully part of a democratic stream of information, reporting on the same events. I think the journalists work will continue to be closely followed by those who search for the truth; I think the journalists will benefit from access to multiple contemporaneous perspectives on what’s unfolding in front of them.

Bring it on!

Why we have no time to think

Just came across this wonderful explanation of lack of attention span in our increasingly connected world. That’s why it’s ever more difficult for static media, such as newspapers, TV, parents and employers, to command attention.

BTW, the easiest explanation of asymptotic is that the curve line never quite touches the base line.

Twittering a murder trial

I’ve been playing with Twitter the past few days, trying to understand the strange appeal of posting and perusing 140-character tweets from friends. Along came veteran Wichita Eagle court reporter Ron Sylvester to demonstrate Twitter’s effectiveness as a news tool. Ron has been following a hot local murder trial, posting frequent updates via Twitter. It’s dramatic, informative and addicting to follow Ron’s posts, known as tweets. Just a few days into the trial, the American Bar Association Journal has posted an online story on Ron’s experiment.