Twitter, blog, new media, Twitter, blog, blog

Gosh, I do hate the buzz words that new media terms have become.

A friend shared a post with an interesting graf:

Journalists are obsessed with Twitter. Obsessed. They use it, talk about it, analyze it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, love it, hate it, capitalize on it, become experts on it, monetize it, argue about it, and become micro-famous on it. They are mesmerized with what it is and they are as giddy as Tom Cruise on Oprah just thinking about what it could be. [Source]

Media pundits do boost it like it’s some sort of salvation, but it should be just another little tool for a journalist – a chance to cultivate sources and direct traffic. I can’t quite figure out why we don’t shut up about Twitter – or any other service for that matters, the fad-like frenzies of blogging and Facebook and, damn it, any new word or phrase or concept that businesses, PR flaks or newspapers can use to find salvation. If you did it early enough or talk loudly enough about it, you’re a social media guru, like everyone else on Twitter.

I had a conversation with an executive with the online arm of a major metropolitan media organization a few months ago. He was once a newspaperman: smart, knowing and resourceful. A few of us were talking about innovation in news dissemination and crowdsourcing, and it just felt dirty – I watched this man, once a confident print man, almost grimmace as he spat out the same new media drivel that everyone else with a Twitter account and a blogging platform spits out.

Your newspaper won’t be financially sound because you have a blog. It’s a culture change to which I subscribe, but I fear for the older fellas with families who don’t have the energy and are too damn far along to be relearning the culture of news. So they hide in offices, clinging onto their jobs, saying the words “Twitter, blog, RSS feeds,” but don’t actually mean them or, more accurately, know what they mean.

Journalists are obsessed with Twitter because right now that makes you sound knowledgeable and hip and innovating and understanding of the future of news and culture. But, Jesus, it’s the same problem that a Rastafarian revolutionary might have with the Bob Marley-poster sales on college campuses. Just because you have access to the knowledge and can say the words don’t mean you believe it or aren’t part of the problem.

We don’t need more coverage of these tools, we need more integration, honest integration, of them into our newsrooms. Enough said.

Image from Wikispaces.

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