Social media

This strikes me as so funny and unusual, I have to blog it. … So earlier today I posted this to Twitter:

A short while later I notice that I’ve turned up on Columbia Journalism Review’s website on its “The Kicker” blog, where the (short) blog item is actually longer than my tweet!

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this; I’m happy for the exposure of my candid Twitter thoughts to CJR’s audience. It just amuses me that my 140 characters could grow into something more.

(And thanks, Megan, for referring to me as “new media guru” — although I always feel unworthy on the rare occasions that I get described that way. I have learned a thing or two about digital media over the years, but don’t yet feel worthy of the guru moniker!)

I think this post by Robert Scoble today deserves a reading by all journalists: “Steve Jobs’ bad news heralds the real-time web age.” The A-list blogger was watching his Twitter and Friendfeed streams for news from people about the Steve Jobs announcement of the Apple CEO taking a medical leave, and he was amazed at the amount of instant chatter and information being shared about the announcement.

Posted to Twitter & Twitpic

For any reporter and editor when an important event occurs — especially a local one — watching Twitter and/or Friendfeed is a great information-gathering tool. Yes, as Scoble notes, there’s a lot of noise and you don’t necessarily know who to trust. But the more you use Twitter and/or Friendfeed, the more you’ll come to know the people who you follow — so over time you can pick up a sense of what sources of instant Twitter/Friendfeed news you might trust.

Anyone can do this, of course. When the US Airways plane crashed into the Hudson River earlier today, lots of people posted to Twitter, or added eyewitness photos to Flickr, or other social networks. For an editor sitting in a newsroom overseeing coverage of this event, monitoring the social media stream of eyewitness reports could be a useful addition to the staff reporting arsenal already assigned to the crash and calling in details.

Scoble is a fan of Friendfeed, and it is indeed a useful service for something like this plane crash, since it scans a number of social media outlets. For example, check out this Friendfeed search for “Hudson crash”, which includes all sorts of stuff — from short reports by people who witnessed the crash, to an eyewitness on a ferry who took a close-up of the plane being evacuated and posted it to Twitpic via a Twitter post. (The photo became so popular that it overwhelmed the tiny Twitpic service.)

I think Scoble is correct in saying that the now wide popularity and use of services like Twitter and Friendfeed are the front lines of news. Most of the time for unexpected events, like plane crashes, eyewitnesses are going to be there before professional journalists.

A new role for journalists is to tap into this instant stream of eyewitness accounts. Editors can perform a public service by filtering out the best and most accurate of these early “citizen” reports, saving online users the trouble of combing through all the junk to find the nuggets.

One of the great things about Twitter, of course, is that when a big breaking news event happens, there are often witnesses on the scene with a cell phone who will post some quick tweets about what’s going on, before any reporters can get there. (You’ll remember the Continental jet that went off a Denver runway recently and one of the survivors tweeted about his experience.)

An incident a few days ago proved that’s not always the case. I woke up on New Year’s day and looked at the news on my iPhone to see what was new in the world. Top story in a bunch of places was a crazy bombing threat that shut down much of the resort city of Aspen for much of New Years Eve. By the time I heard about it, the bomber had committed suicide and there was plenty of mainstream media coverage of the story.

But I was curious to see if Twitter was a decent source of news and eyewitness tidbits the evening before, when the craziness was going on and police were roping off city blocks and defusing bombs. I checked out several services (including Twitter’s own advanced search) and looked through tweets sent on New Years Eve by people in Aspen. I was a bit surprised to find not much. Plenty of chatter about sections of the city getting roped off, but nothing from the tweeting witnesses that shed much light on what was going on.

So the local Aspen newspapers got a bit of a break in being the ones getting breaking details onto their websites as their reporters learned what was going on. Columbia Journalism Review has an article that lauds the papers’ coverage: “Aspen New Year’s Eve Bomb Threat Proves—once again—the value of a local paper.”

I’m wondering if this little Twitter experiment I just posted will get any traction. We’ll see.

The amazing thing about Twitter is all the creative (and practical) uses people are finding for it.

Show us your best self-photo!

Last night in Boulder (and not ending till this morning) we had one of our area’s famous windstorms. I saw reports of 80 to 90 mph wind gusts in some areas of the region. (I didn’t get much sleep last night due to the noise, as I’m sure was common for folks around town.)

So what was the first thing I did when I got out of bed? I looked for Boulder Twitter posts to see what other locals were saying, and if they experienced any wind damage. It didn’t occur to me to look in the local newspaper’s website, because I knew that I’d get a good picture of what happened via local tweets.

Lots of journalists have been pondering and pontificating on how to use Twitter to cover news, including me. Last night’s wind storm was yet another classic example. A traditional reporter looking for Boulder residents’ personal experiences could save a lot of time by finding local tweets to pick up tidbits, and contacting some of those Twitter users for follow-up interviews. That surely beats walking or driving around town interviewing people, or calling random residents on the phone.

Here are a few simple ways to find location-specific tweets, such as last night and this morning from Boulder:

1. Use search.twitter.com and search for “boulder winds.” (Skip the quote marks.)
2. Search twitter.local.net for Boulder. (That’ll get you all tweets from Boulder, not just ones about the wind storm.)
3. Many iPhone Twitter apps have search features, which you can use for searching by location and/or keywords. I use Twitterlator Pro and love it.

I’ve just scratched the service. As Twitter use grows, it’s becoming an increasingly useful tool not just for people wanting to keep informed of fast-breaking news, but for reporters looking for eyewitnesses to add to their coverage.

If you’re in the news business and still think Twitter is silly and/or a waste of time, and of little consequence to journalism, this should wake you out of your stupor:

Read his Twitter feed for a survivor’s experience of what he went through and saw — before any reporters could get to interview him and fellow passengers on the Continental plane that crashed on takeoff in Denver Saturday evening.

Also interesting: This short video of the founder of Seesmic explaining how he’s watching CNN coverage of the crash and a spokesman telling reporters there’s no information yet, while the tweeting passenger is spilling his guts already.

This morning I posted a few words to my Twitter account about PC Magazine’s decision to cease print publication…

My Twitter posts also get fed automatically to my Facebook account, where Tom Regan, a smart and talented journalist and media thinker I know, posted what I thought was a profound comment:

“I have a feeling that with the (Christian Science) Monitor and now PC Mag going in the online direction, it’s just the start of a tsunami over the next two years. The current economic situation, more than any other factor, will accomplish what a decade worth of net evangelism has failed to do.”

He’s so right. All the Editor & Publisher columns I’ve written over the years, all the blog posts, etc. perhaps pushed the needle a bit over the years. All the words and speeches from gurus like Jeff Jarvis, Mark Potts, JD Lasica, Amy Gahran, Vin Crosbie, and many others — all imploring traditional news company leaders to let go of their pasts and put online/digital first — mostly just set the stage.

It’s the sad economic situation that is finally going to force the old news companies to do what needs to be done.

Sticking to the topic of “micro-personal news” (see previous blog item), John Paul Titlow wrote me the following note which responds to my September Editor & Publisher Online column, “Newspapers First Need to Redefine ‘News’ to Move Forward Online.” He makes some good points worth sharing, so with his permission here it is:

“I couldn’t agree more with your assessment. I am a 25 year-old news junkie and Web content delivery manager for a weekly newspaper company in Philadelphia. Personally, I am able to consume most of my ‘news’ from the home screen of my iPhone.

“That includes the NYTimes and NPR apps for iPhone, a Digg app to see what the Digg community is pushing, CNN to tune into what’s considered ‘news’ by one of the big cable players, and Google Reader (any number of Web design & tech blogs, newspaper industry sites, Reuters, about 2 dozen other sites I read).

“But what I find myself tapping just as often as Google Reader or NYTimes are Twitter and Facebook. You’re right; it’s addictive. In a few seconds, I can see what friends are tweeting or posting as their ’status’ on Facebook. It’s even called a ‘News Feed’ on Facebook.

“Before reading your column, however, I hadn’t thought of it that way — these status posts and tweets are just as much news to me as headlines about the Iraq war or tech news.

“Newspaper companies will have to find a way to leverage this. You correctly point out that the ‘open’ nature of (most) social networks and their API’s should help enable this. I would also add that recent moves towards a universal log-in (OpenID, etc.) should also make this vision of ‘news’ closer to a reality.

“Hopefully publishers will catch on before it’s too late.”

Interesting. I’ve been getting a new round of e-mail comments about the Editor & Publisher Online column I did back in late September: “Newspapers First Need to Redefine ‘News’ to Move Forward Online.” (My most current one is here.)

Also, Paul Gillin over at NewspaperDeathWatch.com did a blog item about the column, “Your Friend Feed Is News,” published just today.

When I wrote that column, I really felt like it touched on an important concept that’s been largely ignored by the news industry (and newspapers, especially, for whom I target my E&P columns): People today have the opportunity to receive a stream of what I call “micro-personal news” from their friends and family via participation in social networks (like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, FriendFeed, et al). News organizations need to recognize that and incorporate it into their own definition of news, and start including micro-personal news in personalized or “individuated” news streams, along with traditional news content.

The column didn’t elicit as much reaction as I’d hoped for when first published, which I found disappointing. Maybe there’s another chance for these ideas to get more discussion and analysis?

Even though most news websites now allow user comments, it still bugs me to see so little editorial staff participation in comment threads. Having editors and reporters take part and respond to reader comments is a powerful way to keep the discussion more focused and civil. Of course, it’s no guarantee of preventing things from getting out of control, but it helps, a lot.

I just spotted an excellent example (below) of a newspaper staff member diving into an active comment thread. Kudos to Erika Stutzman, editorial page editor of the Boulder Daily Camera, for responding to a user comment that was critical of the paper for publishing a story about its downtown building going up for sale. (The Daily Camera building is prime real estate on the west end of the fabled Pearl Street Mall.)

Yeah, it takes staff journalists extra time to participate. But the benefits of being more “social” online are significant. As modern media consumers now expect their interactions with media companies to be more interactive, diving in and talking directly with readers is necessary for a news organization to remain relevant.