Journalists Who TwitterGary Trudeau's Doonesbury cartoon roasts a cohort group that seems to deserve a little ribbing. But if you're into this kind of thing, here's a journalist's guide to Twitter.
Working With Words
A weblog devoted to spurring a conversation among those who use words to varying degrees in their daily work. Hosted by John Ettorre, a Cleveland-based writer and editor. Please email me at: john.ettorre@gmail.com. "There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real." --James Salter
Monday, December 07, 2009
Journalists Who TwitterGary Trudeau's Doonesbury cartoon roasts a cohort group that seems to deserve a little ribbing. But if you're into this kind of thing, here's a journalist's guide to Twitter.
About Me
- Name: John Ettorre
- Location: Cleveland, Ohio
I'm a Cleveland, Ohio-based writer, editor and writing coach, with more than 25 years of experience, including stints in Chicago and Washington, D.C. My work has appeared in more than 100 print and online publications, from the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor to local and regional publications. My work has been recognized by awards (including an Emmy) from four journalism groups.
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10 Comments:
Amanda Palmer made $19,000 in 10 hours using twitter. Click on indie musician
I think it's quite a phenomenon, but I don't personally get it. Who has time to be checking in on everybody else's life?
It helps to have ADHD, I think. Different strokes, I guess.
Not my cup of tea, and I'm a multi-tasker, but not that multi, nor that fast. Sometimes I need a toilet break, a cup of tea or a rest.
It's nice to be on a human schedule, isn't it?
I have a Twitter acct, because it seemed to be part of the "social media" mix prescription.
For the life of me, I've not really figured out how it's useful. When I write something, I do throw it up on Twitter, and when I read something interesting. But it's like watching a stock ticker which is something I cannot understand either, so I rarely utilize it. It's just another "To Do" thing when I write an article and notify the masses. I don't even get that many referrals via Twitter.
For me, Facebook & blogs are much more useful social media tools.
John, you really utilize LinkedIn well, which is another tool I've not really embraced.
I think it's more important to find the best tool and use it well instead of having a box of tools that get rusty.
Kim, I'm of the same mind. Whichever social networking tools fit your lifestyle and your goals best, just choose one or two, and make the most of them. For some people, that might include Twitter. I say knock yourself out. Just don't do something out of a sense of being stampeded, or thinking you have to do it to be cool or to keep up with everyone else. That's a recipe for failure.
The main thing about Twitter that makes it useless to me is that you have to give it so much attention. It's designed to distract you and suck the life out of every other way of connecting you might want to do.
I think it DOES help to have ADD.
I also think that it promotes ever-faster but ever-more-superficial "connecting." There's no meat on those feathers. It's all about speed and being quick and witty. It's all about passing on quickly to next thing. It's Andy Warhol's famous comment that "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes" taken to an extreme. It's a sign of the acceleration of culture, but in a way that makes things more surface-oriented.
In other words, it's pretty much designed to make you faster but with a shorter attention span and less actual depth to any information you might actually have at your fingertips. It's the "blllboard culture," the "bumpersticker culture" reduced to its simplest: soundbytes rather than thoughtful or truthful speaking.
No thanks.
You've put your finger on an important additional element, Art. In a world that's increasingly on-demand (meaning things like Tivo and archived TV shows and podcasts that you can download and listen to/watch on your schedule rather than someone else's), Twitter seems to be going in the opposite direction. Blogs and other such media are easily caught up to on your own time. That's far less true with Twitter.
Wow...everyone's hating on Twitter! I actually like it. It's one of those things - like a blog - in which you need to figure out how to make it work for you.
There's no one set way to use it, and there's no single purpose. It seems like to me, those people who don't figure out how to use it to make it work for them will just never understand it.
You're obviously not alone in thinking that, T, so by all means use it to your heart's content, notwithstanding anything we have to say about it.
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