AP reporter tweets Raiders coach fired, except he wasn't

You don't say...

You mean in the form of little snippets and a hyperlink most people don't click on? That's great if that's your thing, but it's not a great argument for anything other than "sooner is always better."

Again, that's great if that's your thing. It also has caused a lot of other people to try very hard to be one of those "tremendous personalities," and those people are usually the ones most responsible for lowering the discourse.

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I should clarify that saying I'm not "on" Twitter and never will be means I don't have an account. I am, however, acutely aware of what Twitter is and what it's used for. I understand it just fine. And, specifically in terms of media, there are way more pitfalls than benefits to it.

 

1, To say that tweeters overvalue their opinion when we do the same thing here is bad math. Or don't all of those locked threads say anything?

2, I watched Ferguson unfold on Twitter in real time long before any legacy property got its hands on the story. That's just one example.

3, People have been trying to become "tremendous personalities" since cavemen at the Saturday night talent show around the fire pit ... all the way to Twitter. I see it as another form of engagement. There's zero difference between replying to someone's post on Facebook and tweeting a tweeter who tweets something that's interesting, funny, stupid, or newsworthy.

 

I said nothing about moderators overvaluing, or even valuing, people's opinions.

I'm sure it was all responsibly reported and 100 percent verified and true, too.

So, in other words, you agree with me. I really don't see how anyone can argue differently - "LOOK AT ME!" is literally the entire premise of social media.

 

4, Not to mention, just the little things.



@guyadams 10m West London. What a place.


That's a piece of interesting news, the Starbucksification of West London. You can say, No shit Starbucks is everywhere! but the visual adds great perspective.

So that's one little tiny morsel of newsie goodness that I find throughout the day.

We both agree that finding a way to utilize and MONETIZE Twitter is the big question. I don't have an answer for that.

But, I'm getting news on Twitter before I get it anywhere else.

After your post, MC: Yes, social media is "LOOK AT ME!" but that's just a sliver of it all. I'm not going on there to get people to "LOOK AT ME!" but I'm going there to see the world unfold before my eyes in real time, and I'm going there to chat it up with people I've gotten to know (from SJ to 2.0 to newspapers to places I've lived around the world, etc), and I'm going there to post stories I've written in the gallery. I'm going there for a thousand reasons before I'm going there to proclaim "LOOK AT ME!"

 

You can easily use the Starbucks graphic to localize something. People love visuals.

 

@MotherJones 21m
Mitt Romney takes another crack at explaining the 47 percent http://bit.ly/1yz0a53

Thing is, I *would* click on that just to see the first few graphs, maybe get to the nutty part, before clicking out.

A few more examples ...

Yes I follow Jemele but usually scroll by her stuff. And yet this is a funny tweet:

‏@jemelehill 23m If it comes with a free du-rag, you probably shouldn't drink it



I guess the bottom line is this: how can one USE Twitter to one's advantage in the newsroom?

Here's a link I won't click on because the tweet was great with one piece of info, and that's all I'd need from that story:

@SI_Wire 47m According to one sportsbook, the Cleveland Cavaliers are projected to win 58.5 games. http://si.com/nba/2014/10/01/cleveland-cavaliers-odds-superbook …

 

It seems to me you have an extremely heightened sense of intellectual curiosity that 99 percent of Twitter users would never even try to reach.

 

Eh, I started Twitter a long time ago at the newspaper in Trenton. Followed this person and that person, this newspaper and that mag, this comedian and Alec Baldwin etc etc. The feed grew and grew and grew. I rarely prune the list. I think my feed delivers a pretty well-rounded perspective of the world.

And that's the thing: If you want me to read your shit, you better come to me on Twitter.

 

How do you find those you follow on twitter? Do you seek them out if you have not
noticed a tweet from them in a while or is it more serendipitous.

I tend to take a serendipitous approach to twitter. I catch people if their tweets pop up in the block of time I am looking, otherwise I'll likely miss them.

 

It just sort of happened. Early on I followed a bunch of media outlets and if they tweeted something that included another outlet or personality that provided a nugget of goodness, I followed the accompanying @. Sports- and Sportswriter-wise, you I followed all of the entities (ESPN, SI, Yahoo) and the "name" guys and gals from MacGregor to Double-G Doyel to Passan to Pos to Jones to any number of ESPN peoples etc etc.

At some point the feed became Gremlins-like, just kept multiplying. I should probably prune it by 250-300 but that requires work.

Here's another example: I follow Tornoe because I like his Philly sports cartoons. I don't follow the Boston Herald but I might after this cartoon that made me laugh.

@RobTornoe 3m Wow, I normally love Jerry Holbert's @BostonHerald cartoons. Don't know what he was thinking on this one...

 

But don't you worry that a lot of good tweets will fall through the cracks because
you miss them due to volume.

When I look at twitter I'll read whatever is on my screen at that time and perhaps
scroll down a bit. It leaves me feeling that I'm missing a lot of good tweets.

 

The Herald apparently caught some heat because watermelon is now raspberry. I wasn't laughing at the watermelon (as racist) part -- I was laughing because the intruder has made it into the bathtub, and Obama's HOLY SHIT! eyes. I suppose that is what Tornoe was implying with his tweet.

@linc0lnpark 2m #politics #media RT @steveannear: Why did #Herald change "Raspberry" to "Watermelon" in cartoon abt President Obama?



And Boom: information is retweeted so fast these days that I'm not missing much if it comes to important news. If I haven't seen a tweet by certain sportswriters after a day or two I'll go to their feeds to see what I might have missed.