Quitting social media

My old roommate used to have this discussion all the time when we were young pups in the business. He claimed scoops were "overrated," for some of the reasons @BTExpress notes. I disagreed.

It was a purely academic argument, though, as we both chased them with vigor.

 

Oh, I'm all for doing your job with vigor. It's all we know. Never said you SHOULDN'T do it.

Just feels much of the time like Adrian Monk adjusting out-of-place nicknacks on a mantel. In the grand scheme of things . . .

 

That's of course based on the training we all received and the mindset we (most) still carry.

Can't see how it matters though. That practice traces to the days where newspapers were trying to get you to spend a quarter every day on your news report rather than the other guy's. Seems like the impact pieces are the ones that aren't on deadline but reflect a bit more.

 

Plus, if you "scooped" someone else in the older days, you'd have at least 24 hours of exclusivity.

Now, you'd be lucky to have 24 minutes before anyone else picks it up.

 

Oh absolutely. Our coverage plan actually played out really well. We got the story up that night, so our readers knew he died. I know the reflective pieces are more valuable in time, but it is important to get the news out when it happens, too.

The deeper dive came the next day. It’s a piece I am very proud of. We had multiple reporters on it and I edited it. I don’t see any issue at all with the coverage plan and how it played out.

 

I'm sure it was very good.

How much more money did it make the news outlet? How many subscribers did it gain?

 

We’re the most read insider publication in our industry. Keeping it that way requires work.

The monetary gain assigned to one story should never be the goal. It’s the quality of the entire product that brings in revenue.

 

I took about a month off all social media during the summer and was pretty amazed how much less irritable I was.
I fortified my man cave, grew a rose garden, read a few books that were literally piled up in a corner and built a Lego village for the kids.
Twitter is road rage and bad jokes. It has gone well beyond what any of its instigators have dreamt (and they still don't even know how to profit off it).
At some point you are what you swim in.

 

You took a month off and then went back? Do you use it any differently now? Why did you go back?

Not snarky or anything—honest questions.

 

I went back because my family and friends are far-flung, and I love and miss them.
I think the election killed Facebook. It is just not a nice place anymore. Maybe I had been using it wrong in the past. But at one time I saw much value in it.
Or maybe if you're on something for 10 years the interest naturally wanes. I understand why people stopped posting here, for instance. You just sort of forget to do it, and it becomes habit.
I made it a point on returning not to type one word about politics. I don't want to see his fat doughey face when I visit the site, don't want to see links about him, and I don't want to be part of the problem.
My wife is obsessive with Twitter - it burns my ass sometimes - yet I recognize that it is an important part of her work.
But I can't pretend the site hasn't completely retarded our national conversation.
At least on Facebook you are among friends, so to speak.

 

Thanks for the reply. I don't think I'm going to go back on Twitter. I'm not sure how long it's been... More than a week, I think. I have more time in the day. I'm happier. I miss some people on there, because there are a lot of nice people out there, but I'm not sure the good outweighs the bad.

 

We all have books to read and children to raise instead of arguing with some fuckhead that you can probably admit you wouldn't give the time of day to under any other circumstance.
I like to mix it up as much as anybody and I can grant that.
This garbage is making us meaner as a species, and the world needs to be a little less mean right now.