Hypercrit » Social Networking

Info about Twitter for journalists

Michael Becker — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:35:56 +0000

An absolute bevy of information for journalistic uses of Twitter from Mr. Steve Buttry. Read it, and read the article he links to by Julie Posetti; it’s an analysis of Twitter use by Australian journalists.

Pew releases its ‘Millenials’ report

Michael Becker — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:42:54 +0000

Pew Research released its report on the “Millenial” generation today. I’ve downloaded it (you can too) and I look forward to reading it and commenting on it tonight. Related posts:Pew Report: Most Americans wouldn’t care much if their local newspapers disappeared City of Bozeman releases report on hiring policy investigation Thoughts on Pew statistics Related posts:

Journalism can’t be a one-way street anymore

Michael Becker — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:34:23 +0000

I don’t know who made up the rule that news reporters aren’t supposed to respond to public comments about and critiques of their work. Maybe it’s not even a rule. Maybe its one of those arbitrary rules that somebody thought was a good idea once upon a time, though it really had no basis in life — like not ending an English sentence with a preposition.

Either way, it’s about time we got over ourselves as some institution of capital-J Journalism and responded to readers in the comments sections of our sites, engaged with them on Twitter and answered their questions on Facebook.

As Robert Quigley at Old Media New Tricks writes, “People seem to think we’re a giant, uncaring media corporation. They’re pleasantly surprised when they get a real human response.”

For the sake of argument though, what’s the justification for maintaining a wall of silence? Why should we not respond to reader questions and concerns? Anyone?

A third as prolific as Twitter seems to think

Michael Becker — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:07:57 +0000

In case you were checking up on me, my Twitter account is one of many affected by a bug that somehow multiplied our tweet counts by a factor of roughly three. I have not tweeted more than 11,300 times, but if you want to think of me as being that prolific, be my guest.

Responding to readers by proxy

Michael Becker — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:06:24 +0000

After reading a story on the Billings Gazette’s Web site about a woman who spent several months living in a sandstone cave above the city, I perused the story’s comments.

This was among them:

My question is, why didn’t the reporter respond himself? If there’s a policy preventing him from doing so, why does the paper have that policy? Why aren’t reporters engaging with their readers online?

A cooling off period in Bloomington, Ill.

Michael Becker — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 04:20:53 +0000

Okay, this is the wrong way to build a civil community on your newspaper’s Web site. Just before the new year, the staff at the Pentagraph in Bloomington, Ill., decided that the comments on its stories were too uncivil, so the paper took its ball and went home:

Reader comments on Pantagraph.com often are informative, sparking serious dialogue on an issue of local or national interest. At other times, they are offensive and devoid of civility, the worst of which include personal attacks and/or assertions that have nothing to do with the story.

In recent weeks, we have seen too much of the latter on some local stories. Far too much. So, effective immediately and through the New Year’s holiday weekend, no comments will be allowed on new local content posted on Pantagraph.com.

This “cooling off” period is meant as a strong reminder to our online readers: that the reason comments are allowed in the first place is to foster a “spirit of community involvement and conversation.”

Comically, the paper added this postscript to its message some time later:

P.S. — Thank you for your comments on this decision. No more comments are being accepted on this matter as of 3:30 p.m. Dec. 31.

Makes me wonder what the comments were like on this particular article before they shut them off.

Anyway, this is not the way to improve the civility of your online community. Yes, these vitriolic, abusive commenters were violating the paper’s terms of service agreement or online behavior pact. And while you can legally hold these people accountable for behaving by the terms of that agreement, you can’t reasonably expect people to abide by the terms of an agreement they likely agreed to without reading it.

No, you can’t flash a page of legalese in front of a user and expect the community to moderate itself. A strong, respectful community needs moderators who care about the community. Most newspaper sites’ comments are fire-and-forget. That is, they are an feature tacked on because somebody thought that Web sites are supposed to have comments.

Rather than cutting off comments and punish those petulant children for their misbehavior, why not make the reporters at the paper take ownership of the comments on their articles. The reporters, who already have an investment in the story, can moderate the comments, participate in the discussion and help keep things civil without resorting to putting your readers in “time out.”

Update: Jason Fry at Reinventing the Newsroom suggests giving users more tools to police their own online communities. These are great ideas, provided that your newspaper has the ability to install modern commenting systems that have tools like the ones he mentions. (Mine doesn’t. Sadface.)

There’s no excuse not to link to news sources | Joe Ruiz

Michael Becker — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:58:48 +0000

When people want to know, especially when it comes to breaking news or severe weather, they want the info. They don’t care where they get it from as long as it’s a source they trust.

via joeruiz.net

A nice post from Joe Ruiz back in May 2009 about link journalism. He advocates linking directly to the article you’re referring to, rather than linking to your own site first, even though doing so gets your site more hits.

I agree that we should always, always give credit where its due and that we should never feel bad about retweeting or crediting a competitor. After all, we’re in the business of spreading news; it doesn’t matter where the news comes from.

I do, however, support the idea of occasionally linking first to your own site’s coverage of a story. Granted, we don’t want people to think they’ve been given a small-time rickroll, but for big local stories, I think it’s OK to drive traffic directly to your organization’s site.

That said, if all your site’s doing is rereporting what someone else has said, like in Ruiz’s example, then we should probably just be linking to the original and following up with our own reporting if the story warrants it.

Cross-posted from my Posterous site at Becker’s Online Journal

Why Twitter Will Endure

Michael Becker — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:37:26 +0000

At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while.

via nytimes.com

David Carr writes that Twitter is more like Internet “plumbing” than a fad, a service with something for everybody that only gets better the more people use it.

“At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while,” Carr writes. He notes that most people on Twitter don’t care what you have to say, unless you’re immensely influential or famous; but Twitter can be an immensely useful source of instant news.

I agree, and this is probably the reason I don’t tweet very much, but I have to wonder after reading Carr’s essay whether Twitter can sustain if the average user does what he suggests. That is, if most of the smart, thoughtful yet not famous people use Twitter just to listen to smart, thoughtful famous people, then we lose something in the transaction.

I know. Most people, even the listeners Carr talks about, will tweet from time to time and may even contribute something interesting to the collective conversation. Maybe my concern is moot.

Still, if enough people do more listening than tweeting on Twitter, over time that imbalance will add up, turning Twitter into little more than a broadcasting medium for popular people. I’m not going to work out any math on that observation. It could take years for that situation to emerge, so consider this instead as a thought experiment.

Cross-posted from my Posterous site at Becker’s Online Journal

Web 2.0 Suicide

Michael Becker — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:00:51 +0000

TechCrunch carried a story this morning about a new site called the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. The site does just what it says, almost. You give the site your social networking credentials and it automatically starts deleting your friends and contacts and posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Once you start the process, there’s no stopping it. It executes a python script that kills your social media profile, one contact at a time. The only thing is doesn’t do is actually delete the accounts.

My question is why doesn’t it actually delete the accounts? Is this because an automated script can’t do that? Is it prohibited in the Facebook and Twitter terms of service? Or is it intentional? Do we always want to allow for the possibility that we’ll want to get back in to our social networking accounts?

I went through this a year ago with my old Hotmail account. To delete or not to delete? I ended up keeping the account mostly because I couldn’t deal with losing the possibility of having access to that account again (or the possibility that someone else could adopt that username).

Maybe the Web 2.0 suicide machine is not really a final solution. Maybe it’s just a cry for help?

Stimulus money, tennis courts and Baucus accusations

Michael Becker — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:32:19 +0000

On Monday, a YouTube video surfaced online showing Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) debating health care. In the video, Baucus slurs words and rambles. The person who posted the video accused the senator of being drunk on the senate floor.

On Tuesday, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle published a routine story on this week’s City Commission meeting, during which the commissioners approved spending about $50,000 in federal stimulus money to fix up the tennis courts at Bogert Park.

Both stories received oodles of attention online. The Baucus video, with its provocative title, “Senator Max Baucus Drunk/Intoxicated on Senate Floor — Shouts Down Wicker,” was circulated widely around the social Web and blogosphere. The tennis courts story was linked by the Drudge Report, which led to all manner of social media and blog reactions.

The Baucus story was ignored by mainstream media outlets for the most part. The tennis court story was picked up by the Associated Press and inspired a 7-minute segment on Fox News. Why one and not the other?First, I can’t speak for other newsrooms across the country, but in ours, many of the reporters have in the past spoken with Baucus in person. Our own experience told us that the way he’s heard speaking in the video is about how he speaks all the time. The man slurs words; he rambles. That’s Max Baucus.

Second, we have to look at the source. The person who posted the YouTube video with the inflammatory title goes by the username SocialistsSteal. He lists his occupation, on his YouTube profile page, as “Crusader Against Fascism and Socialism Crap.” For his Web site, he lists Liberty Forest, a Ron Paul forum.

I’m just going to come out and say it: SocialistsSteals does not seem like a trustworthy source.

Baucus’ office must have fielded at least a few calls from news organizations about the video on Monday (Politico’s Click blog said it had sent questions) because Baucus issued a statement to the media late Monday.

Spokesman Ty Matsdorf denied that Baucus was drunk on the Senate floor, the Great Falls Tribune reported. Matsdorf said the accusations paired with the video show just how nasty the debate over health care has become.

Unfortunately, those who want to kill any meaningful reform turned it into an unfounded, untrue, personal-smear Internet rumor. This is beyond the pale, and this type of gutter politics has no place in the public sphere.

So a poor source and past journalistic experience pretty much guaranteed accusations of drunkenness weren’t going to make the papers.

Now what about the tennis courts? That story picked up just as much Web buzz as the Baucus story and it got covered in quite a few papers (thanks to it being picked up by the Associated Press).

First of all, the facts of the story were undeniable. The city of Bozeman was spending roughly $50,000 to resurface the tennis courts, and that money was coming from the federal stimulus package for Montana.

Second, the headline, “City spending stimulus money on new tennis courts,” had just enough keywords to catch the attention of somebody at Drudge Report, which being a right-leaning site, was naturally looking for stories about potential abuses of the stimulus package.

Tennis courts connote ideas of luxury, not public recreation and fitness. The story seemed to be about wasteful or wrongheaded spending, despite the fact that the Montana Reinvestment Act specifically allows Bozeman to spend stimulus money on improving recreation facilities. And since major news outlets tend to only give local stories like this a casual glance and then use a boiled-down parable version of the story to make a political point, it was, again, natural that this would make good fodder for the talking heads onscreen.

Finally, perhaps the most important nail in the coffin for covering the tennis court outcry was the fact that Bozeman has found its way into the Web spotlight twice already this year — once for the March 5 natural gas explosion downtown and again for the social networking privacy fiasco.

When lightning strikes a third time, you cover it.