Twitter is Growing Incidental Journalists

Ever notice when an event features a speaker, that Twitter and other tools of the statusphere become random quote generators? It happened during the inaugural address, the VMAs and the Emmy’s, it even happened during BlogWorld – the list goes on. And it makes perfect sense – event speakers typically focus on presenting some type of takeaway for attendees. In turn, attendees capture the quote, re-broadcast it (hopefully with attribution) and add some context, like a hashtag.

If you’ve ever live-tweeted or updated a status from an event, you understand the human compulsion for quoting a speaker; they’re an authority for that event. But in my opinion, broadcasting quotes makes you part of a group I heard radio host Hugh Hewitt refer to as “incidental journalists.” You’re interested in sharing the news of what’s happening, but through the words of event authorities. Surprise, that makes you a journalist.

Before I moved to Minneapolis, I worked in Central Maine as a beat reporter at the Bangor Daily News, a family-owned newspaper with about 68,000 circulation (at the time). As you might imagine, quotes were everything. I covered a lot (read: hundreds) of municipal council meetings, and even when they weren’t particularly exciting, council members, residents or business owners would offer up quotes that encapsulated the issue being debated. Those quotes often became the meat of a story because they came from real people.

Now that I work in marketing, I’m fascinated when I attend an event – like a monthly Social Media Breakfast presentation (though I missed yesterday’s event) – and I see people reporting great quotes. On laptops or mobile devices, they type quotes into Twitter, and instantly, they’re publishing to their circulations (follower lists) in the hundreds and thousands. While the traditional news model may be changing, journalism isn’t going anywhere.

“I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out. They sold their soul to the devil, and the devil was dill.” – Mitch Hedberg

Filed under: social media, Uncategorized, bangor daily news, journalism, journalist, quotes, Twitter

Off to BlogWorld

It’s sad to think of all the blogs that start with such great passion, but end up languishing in the online graveyard of unloved digital spaces. This was one of those spaces – I set up an account as a test when considering where to move my DIY home improvement blog from Blogger (Pounded Thumb).

WordPress didn’t make the cut, but it has a sweet iPhone app, so I thought I’d reincarnate the site for the purposes of catching non-DIY topics: namely work-type things like marketing, social media and coffee.

That said, I’m headed to Blogworld this afternoon and will plan to drop updates via this sweet set-up. But first – on a completely unrelated subject:

Filed under: Uncategorized