Twitter is Addicting
I have a new obsession. Forget checking email, voicemail or Facebook status updates. I want to know what is happening on Twitter.
I’m not continually checking tweets to see who you had lunch with, or where you’re going on vacation. I’m only mildly curious if you had an unusual street encounter, but not terribly interested in what your boss said at the meeting that lasted way too long. And I don’t care what you bought at the grocery store.
Instead, I’m hooked on the endless updates from traditional news outlets such as CNN and The New York Times. I’m fascinated by their embrace of social media. I can’t get enough: Google World News, WSJ, and The Today Show’s tweets from Beijing. For a former reporter, it’s a new, wonderful way to stay abreast of local, national and world news. And with a simple click, I can just as easily choose not to follow ‘what are you doing?’
I also get a kick out of the politicians who are tweeting. At first I just followed Obama, intrigued to see how his groundbreaking campaign would use this particular digital strategy. But then I became curious and wanted to see what the Clintons — both Hillary and Bill — were tweeting about. And, after Friday, I decided it could be interesting to follow John Edwards.
I am now a constant source of useful — or useless — information. I know what is happening in Georgia and I know what is happening on Capitol Hill. I even know what you ordered for lunch at that new restaurant everyone’s been dying to try. Sometimes it is too much information. Sometimes, not enough. Twitterers have to be very resourceful with the 140-character limit.
You know what I like best? Following tweets is easier than clicking through online versions of each newspaper or website. As for the hard copies I still have delivered to my front door? The day may soon come when I choose Twitter over newsprint-stained hands.
Watching a War
I’ve been watching YouTube postings about the war in Iraq. I am struck by how some of the videos look like video games and how some war footage is raw and how some is set to music. It is almost like it isn’t real. And yet, at the same time, it is very real.
During the first Gulf War, CNN changed the way those of us “back home” saw the war. For the first time, cameras recorded the fighting, scud attacks and blood shed which often appeared on our television screen without the filter of an editor. The frightened voices of journalists sometimes accompanied that raw footage.
Now, the current Iraq conflict is brought into our living rooms — or where ever our computer is set up — through video clips captured by camcorders or cell phones and posted on YouTube. No editor or journalistic filter is required.
I found myself wondering–just who was filming and posting these videos? Were these soldiers entering combat with a camera and a weapon? Was the film from journalists or bystanders? Who edited and added music and graphics to some of the postings? And why did some of the YouTube videos have 300+ views and others thousands. Or, as the one I just watched, “US Marines In Iraq Real Footage Warning Graphic” had more than 3 million hits. 3,642,405 to be exact. Is this the new citizen journalism? See for yourself:
New Horizons
You can take a girl out of traditional journalism but can you take traditional journalism out of the girl?
Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that through hard work and extensive reporting a journalist educates her readers on events or issues that the general public does not have access to. But I also realize that the first CNN camera that recorded unfiltered events as they happened (a White Bronco driving down the 405 Freeway or scud attacks during the first Gulf War) changed the way journalists delivered the news and the way the public wanted it delivered. Most important, it also started the evolution of WHO would deliver the news.
In his book, We the Media, Dan Gillmor makes the case for grassroots journalism or citizen journalism. The media and technology savvy public want to be part of the conversation. And in the age of IM , texting and cell phone video, we want our news, information and, of course celebrity gossip NOW. As a traditionalist I worry about this new direction and the new definition of “news,” perhaps almost as much as traditional historians worried about the first oral histories they encountered.
I also realize that grassroots journalism brings more stories–perhaps the stories that we all really care about — to a wider audience. And, as more traditional journalistic tools (printed newspapers and magazines) struggle to stay afloat, at least there are newer methods of engaging citizens in the conversation.
Grassroots journalism certainly gives new meaning to the old Walter Cronkite news series, “You Are There.”
