sherrymims.com » new media

Social butterfly effect

Sherry — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:42:42 +0000

One of the reasons I wanted to be a journalist is to inform, so I love social media. I find it interactive, instantaneous and full of excitement. New social media sites are popping up at a quick rate, and they’re changing our daily lives just as fast. The best platforms allow you to share information with people who might pass it along as well.

(Of course, you should share good, relevant information and avoid anything inflammatory, but that’s a post for another day.)

When I go on Twitter, I usually go on it to either improve my skills or communicate something. I was lucky Sept. 14 when @Poynter (the voice of the prestigious Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg) tweeted:

Join us now for a live chat w @KimBui about what it takes to stand out as a community/social media editor: http://journ.us/rh1MtG

I asked, “Kim, what qualifications should someone have to be a community/social media editor?”

She replied:

First and foremost a sense of experimentation. You should also be active on most major networks (FB and Twitter) and have tried a few others. Have ideas about how to engage readers better and improve the final product through SM.

Also, network like you’ve never networked before. Most SM editors know each others, so if you know some of us, you’ll get an inside track.

Good, right? You really should read all of Kim Bui’s tips.

I feel like I’m on the right track. I’ve met loads of influential people through the #dbtweetup (Daytona Beach’s monthly Tweet-Up) and have already used my skills for the print product.

In fact, one of my awards from The Daytona Beach News-Journal involved, yes, using Twitter. The crew of the night desk expected it to be a calm Sunday night, but on May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama came on the air and announced the death of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11.

The Associated Press sent out a scant nine inches right at deadline, so what did I do? As I replated the inside pages, I looked up the @whitehouse Twitter feed and found the exact contents of Obama’s speech to help fill the front page to get it out.

The next day, my former co-worker Kari saw The Daytona Beach News-Journal’s front page flashed on CNN.

Though journalism has changed, the fundamentals are still there, and social networking continues to give us options for improvement. On Sept. 14, I subscribed to Quora, a question-and-answer site. On Sept. 15, Facebook announced a “Subscribe” option, which is great for following a source without having to “friend” someone you don’t know well. Likewise, today, Sept. 20, I signed up to get a promo code for Mail-ette, a site for sharing graphic elements and gaining feedback.

In the future, I’m betting we’ll have better information and a bigger ability to distill and share pertinent information. News is still news — whatever the format.

Clever advertising…for newspapers?

Sherry — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:20:30 +0000

I like this television advertisement for The Sun (U.K.), promoting a newspaper’s utility. It rather reminds me of an Apple Commercial. I wish it would play over here!

Thoughts?

Cronkite, authority and journalism today

Sherry — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:08:49 +0000

As most everyone knows by now, Walter Cronkite, 92, died Friday. He was well before my time, but is a good example of the bygone days of journalism. I’d like to share an interesting Associated Press essay by Ted Anthony on Cronkite and how my profession has changed today–from an almost monolithic “authority” to fragmentation due to new media.

An excerpt:

No one person can speak for us all — we don’t even pretend that’s the case anymore — and those who tried would be put in their places as fast as you can say Edward R. Murrow.

That can be a glorious expression of democracy, or it can lead, as it did Saturday morning, to the most e-mailed story on Yahoo! News being the one about the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile crashing into a house in Wisconsin. Democracy has a way of being quite democratic.

Kutcher wins Twitter war with CNN

Sherry — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:04:15 +0000

When I first heard about Ashton Kutcher’s and CNN’s race to get a million followers on Twitter, I was amused. I was amused until I read what Ashton Kutcher said:

“I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher says. “So I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner — because I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

About social media overturning traditional media, he says:

“I think it’s a huge statement about social media for one person to actually have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network,” he said in a YouTube video.

“I think it sort of signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social media outlets, social news outlets,” Kutcher said.

“With our video cameras on our cellphones and our picture cams and our blogging and our Twittering and our posting and our Facebooking we actually become the source of the news and the broadcasters of the news and the consumers of the news.”

…and then he won:

“We can and will create our media,” he said.

Can you really? Can you really trust some blogger with no journalism background whatsoever to hold the U.S. government accountable?

I don’t think so. I think democracy is in trouble if wannabes are all we have left of the media.

That being said, I don’t think social media is a bad thing. I belong to almost every social networking site there is. I think it really enriches one’s experience and certainly helps with generating story ideas.

In my opinion, it supplements–not replaces–journalism.