I have been scratching my head the last few days numerous times because of all the Google News alerts about the established news media’s interest in China Twitters.
I am the proud possessor of some sort of Iphone (an Orange SPV C550 - fell in the water twice, blowdried it twice, still works fine) and have emails coming to me via this thing the whole day, wherever I am.
The reason I am mentioning my phone is because mobility very important in reporting these days. The situation in China underscores this. But it’s not the first time this year that Chinese grassroots efforts have prompted me to keep my phone powered up the whole time. When the protests in Tibet broke out recently, I was hugely impressed at the efforts of a few Twitterers in China to tell the outside world was was going on and created a Google News alert to read the latest news stories citing them. On my IPhone. Hoping to sympathize with their blood in the streets reports from the safety of my back garden. You know the feeling that spurs such interests. It’s a mixture between toys for girlz and a craving for new adventure that’s ever so justified because it inspires real work activity too.
I had expected a flurry of newspaper reports about the Chinese/Tibetan Twitters but somehow the news remained slow. So to help the effort along a bit, I wrote a blog post outlining some helpful hints by the Chinese/Tibetan Twitterers to Western editors wishing to get in contact with them and their cronies.
I copied and pasted the blog post into an email to be sent out to 200 editors around the globe. The next days, not a single response. Also virtually no Google news alerts about the Chinese Tibetan Twitter activists. I guess it was due to the success of the Chinese authorities fooling journalists taking them on a trip to China to show how things work the Chinese way.
Those that went on the trip were mainly reporters working for tiny news organizations who promised not to break the hugely irrational rules the Chinese imposed. The trickery is interpreted by the Chinese as implicit approval of their censorship. Let’s hope this will firmly have been relegated to the annals of history by the time the Olympics are finished.
Here at ReporTwitters we’re watching out with a keen eye for that news development that will convince editors of the glorious merits of Twitter as a reporting tool. The proverbial ‘big break’ for reporTwitters will have to be something that will lead editors to adopt technology tracing down any twitter user anywhere and get them to report back to the newspaper. Within the space of five minutes.
It is very difficult marketing such a service to editors by means of mailshots or a one size fits all soap box message because every newspaperhas their own peculiar online strategy. All the more reason to focus on big events and rely on this self evidence.
This might have been what’s happened over the last few days during the Chinese earthquake. The incessant newspaper reports praising of the role of Twitter in covering the Chinese earthquake are however somewhat baffling.
Some people analyzing the Twitter obsession with the Chinese earthquake attribute a lot of it to Robert Scoble. This top Twitter user in terms of followers dedicated plenty of attention to the disaster. Not without reason; the earthquake was reported on Twitter before it was reported anywhere else. That’s a big deal in itself. But the Scoble effect established or underpinned some very interesting dynamics which center all around authority and individuals.
I at first was inclined to believe this to be rather bad news. Thinking ReporTwitters to be doomed because the mechanisms of what’s agenda setting and what not are hardly any different from what determines what makes news in the newspapers themselves. I had been hoping that a big event itself would dictate what’s newsworthy and even though I like Scoble and value his opinion, I dreaded the Scoble effect.
But what is all the more surprising to me now is that newspapers don’t stop producing articles about Twitter’s role in the Chinese earthquake coverage. And singing its praises! True, Twitter is an emergency tool at its very roots, and it’s consoling that it’s obviously strongest in its original function.
I wonder if the event will lead to a renewed interest in using Twitter in newspaper reporting. Perhaps the needs that modern newspapers are meant to have for a direct connection with readers is slowly evaporating as more and more online activities go underway. Some newspaper reporters themselves are taking on new reporting styles very similar to your off beat Twitter witness. Take for instance the Guardian’s Matthew Weaver’s report on the Chinese earthquake.
Rather than getting in touch with grassroots reporters, something online newsventures like Ohme are banking on, newspapers are taking to facilitating their own staff with the tools and tell them to adopt new reporting styles that are even quirkier than the online manifestationings of popular individuals.
In the next few days I will be making an inventory of the newspapers comments on how useful Twitter is and compare it with their online plans. Hopefully that will yield some rational inspiration for what moves to make next.
