Alex Howard has weighed in on the storytelling discussion that I recounted here yesterday.

He likens tweets to amuse-bouche, blog posts to appetizers (which, he notes, can be light or heavy), long-form narrative to the entree and links to dessert. Dan Conover suggested video or comments as side dishes. I added that an interactive database might be the recipe.

I like food and I like storytelling, so I like the metaphors. They’re not precise; sometimes the video or blog post might be the entree. But metaphors are for understanding, not precision. I hope this helps you understand that Twitter and blogging don’t endanger narrative. They add to our storytelling feast.

I recommend three pieces on narrative journalism to your attention.

I addressed the future of storytelling in a recent post, Storytellers are challenged, not limited, by Twitter and other digital tools. That post, if you missed it before, might provide some helpful context for this one.

Joel Achenbach, an outstanding writer for the Washington Post, wrote lovingly about long narrative (focusing on Sports Illustrated überstoryteller Gary Smith) and condescendingly about digital communication:

There’s endless talk in the news media about the next killer app. Maybe Twitter really will change the world. Maybe the next big thing will be just an algorithm, like Google’s citation-ranking equation. But Smith is betting that there will still be a market, somehow, for what he does. Narrative isn’t merely a technique for communicating; it’s how we make sense of the world. The storytellers know this.

They know that the story is the original killer app.

Dan Conover, responding to Achenbach and also referencing Smith, wrote one of the most insightful takes I’ve read on where journalism is and where it’s going:

The current mainstream assumption is that we have to dumb down journalism to survive in the digital era. Dave Kindred seems to have reached that conclusion and accepted it in a column that made me want to reach through the screen and shake him. The answer isn’t dumbing down, and Baseball Hall of Fame sportswriters ought to be the first people to understand this.

Did the invention of the box score ruin sportswriting? No? Why not?

Could it be that human beings process different types of information in different ways, with different needs at different times? …

Today’s revolution isn’t about killing narrative, but about inventing box scores for actions that don’t take place in ballparks.

Deborah Potter, responding to my post, wrote:

So, is Twitter a threat to storytelling? Of course not.  And not just for the obvious reason that Twitter is an entirely different medium from long-form narrative. It’s never going to replace good writing.  Checking a Twitter stream is an entirely different experience from curling up with a good book, and most serious readers–even those who are also avid tweeters–wouldn’t trade one for the other.

But here the real reason Twitter isn’t a threat to storytelling: Twitter can make writing better.

I heartily recommend reading all three pieces (and mine, if you missed it earlier).

This madness has to stop. Intelligent people have to stop thinking that government funding is the solution to the economic challenges facing newspapers.

I love newspapers. I hope they survive and thrive (again) for the rest of my life and beyond. If that delivery system fails, I hope healthy new business and journalism models emerge and stabilize to continue the important roles that newspapers have played for their communities and the nation: informing us of the news and playing the watchdog role on government and other powerful institutions.

My desire to contribute to that healthy future for journalism drove my development of my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, a proposal for a prosperous business model to support strong community journalism organizations. Maybe my plan will work, maybe it won’t. Maybe several different models will support journalism in the future.

But government cannot and must not play a significant role in saving newspapers. Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson suggested government subsidies earlier this month in their report, The Reconstruction of American Journalism, about which I and others have already commented considerably. Now Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, co-founders of Free Press, have written in the Washington Post that journalism needs government subsidies.

No, no, no, no, no. Never. This is a ridiculous idea and it must stop here. These men are all intelligent and are giving this a lot of thought and they write well, but they are wrong and we cannot let these dangerous ideas start gathering momentum.  (I have emailed Nichols and McChesney, inviting their response. Schudson responded twice last week.)

Here’s why journalism doesn’t need and shouldn’t want government subsidies:

1. Journalists must be watchdogs and no dog bites the hand that feeds it.
2. Journalism is not suffering as much as traditional media companies are. Yes, the massive job cuts in newsrooms are disturbing. But we also are seeing an energetic response from entrepreneurs and philanthropists that is producing a stunning array of new journalism organizations. Anyone who can’t see potential in enterprises such as Politico, ProPublica, West Seattle Blog, MinnPost and The Batavian is deliberately uninformed and should not be taken seriously.
3. Postal subsidies from our nation’s early founding (cited as a precedent by Downie/Schudson and McChesney/Nichols) are irrelevant. We had one communication medium then, newspapers. In today’s world of multiple forms of print, broadcast and digital communication, federal subsidies would decide winners and losers, protecting inefficient companies and creating huge obstacles for entrepreneurs. (Update: on this point, see the comments below, as well as Dan Gillmor’s outstanding blog post: The only “journalism” subsidy we need is in bandwidth.
4. The federal government can’t afford to bail out newspapers. Have you been paying attention? The feds already bailed out undeserving banks and automobile manufacturers and are trying to figure out how to fix our health-care system. The taxpayers can’t afford to bail out undeserving media companies and journalism can’t afford to be dependent on a debt-burdened government.
5. It’s just wrong. If government funds, government will regulate. Freedom of the press has to include freedom for the press to fail.

I will be discussing my Complete Community Connection business model Thursday at the Iowa High School Press Association in Iowa City. This is the one-page handout. For more, read the full C3 Blueprint (38 pages as a pdf). Here are the slides for my presentation.

The business models that have supported newspapers (and broadcasting) for decades are breaking down. Some critical elements of the economic crisis facing media:

• Newspaper circulation was 31% of U.S. population in 1940, 13% today.
• Newspaper advertising has dropped 13 straight quarters (7 straight over 10%).
• The problem is not giving content away free online (we never supported content operations with circulation revenue; that pays for production & distribution).
• To remain relevant for the future, we need to master digital & social media and develop new revenue streams.

My Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection proposes a new business model for community media companies (let’s stop calling them newspapers). The core goals:

• Like people turn to Google for multiple needs, people will turn to C3 for whatever they need in and about their community.
• Businesses will turn to C3 to connect with their customers and where possible, C3 will conduct the transactions with customers.

C3’s revenue approach

• We have to move beyond advertising. Advertising is still a service we offer businesses, but only one of many.
• C3 will handle direct sales for business customers (tickets to entertainment and sports events, reservations, gift registries, sports paraphernalia).
• Where we can’t make the sale, we will help connect businesses with customers who most need or want their products or services through lead generation.
• C3 will help advertising reach the customers businesses most want, through targeted advertising.
• We will pursue other revenue opportunities such as sponsorships, events and mobile apps.

Aspects of C3

• Community content (driving, home, conversation, calendar, knowledge)
• Personal content (births, graduations, weddings, schools, etc.)
• Entertainment (fun stuff, entertainment news, user content, games)
• Business services (local search, direct sales, communication services)
• Enriched news (what’s happening now, community engagement, multimedia)

I’ll be leading a Twitter workshop Thursday for the Iowa High School Press Association in Iowa City. Here is the one-page handout for that workshop, a shortened, student version of my Twitter tips for journalists. Here are the slides for the presentation to high school students.

Twitter is not as popular among high school students as some other social networks, but it still is an important tool for student journalists. Use among high school students is growing and it will be more important as you and your audience grow older. You can use Twitter to reach audiences not on Twitter:

• Use the Twitter app on Facebook to feed your tweets there
• Feed your tweets (or lots of people’s tweets, using a #hashtag into a CoverItLive liveblog
• Twitter RSS feed can post your tweets on your home page or blog

Possible uses for Twitter

• Monitor activities and discussions of people in your school
• Connect with people who will provide helpful tips and information
• Connect with other journalists (students or pros) and share ideas
• “Crowdsource” stories by asking your followers for story ideas or information
• Quickly find people who witnessed or experienced an event
• Aggregate tweets of people attending or experiencing an event
• Drive traffic to your web site, blog and/or print edition
• Helps improve your writing (140-character limit forces you to get to the point)

What should you tweet about?

• Link to a new blog post, story, video, photo (brief comment, then compressed link using bit.ly, is.gd or another URL shortener)
• Retweet (with a comment and attritubion) a link from someone else
• Reply to students’ tweets
• Tweet an unfolding story
• Tweet something insightful or funny

Be careful and ethical

• Use your real name. Some tweeps are fake, but journalists should be honest.
• Verify facts.
• Your tweets reflect on your journalism and your news organization.

Don’t really answer Twitter’s basic question “What are you doing?” Better questions: “What are you thinking?” “What are you reading?” “What do you want to know?”

Thanks to Sana Bakshi of @thevikingmag for answering some questions about use of Twitter by student journalists at Palo Alto High School:

Because this is our first year actively using twitter for sports scores, our feedback on the account is limited. Students do use twitter for sports scores, but the main outlet is still facebook or our website (voice.paly.net). In terms of development, we are starting to use twitter for getting sources, gaining interest, and getting contacts.

Additionally, we are using Twitter hashtags to create links. For example if we tweet “#PAfootball beats Milpitas 31-28. Joc Pederson kicks winning field goal. MVP Kevin Anderson for his defensive domination and pick-6. [js]” instead of spelling out Palo Alto Varsity Football, the pound sign also creates a link, so someone can click on it and see all the Palo Alto football tweets. 

I (Sana) am the only one who completely manages the twitter account. Students go to the games and text me the score after the game. Then I forward the text messages to twitter and they get posted online. The same writers who go to these games write for The Viking and also write short sport beats to post online the day after the game.

Here is the link to one of the news stories:  http://voice.paly.net/view_story.php?id=8809

I encourage editors to follow live coverage of the Associated Press Managing Editors convention starting today in St. Louis.

The digital-only coverage of APME09 by University of Missouri students might help you in four ways:

• If you’re attending the convention, it will enhance your understanding of the events and issues.
• If you’re not attending the convention, it will allow you to follow the discussions.
• Either way, it might help you rethink how you cover big events in your community.
• It might help you think differently about what “Web-first” coverage means.

APME asked me to consult with faculty at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at Missouri in planning digital-only coverage. For years, APME has had students provide coverage of the convention in a newspaper distributed daily during the conference. At some point, they started putting that coverage online. But like most newspapers, the online coverage was little more than a digital version of the print coverage. (I heard from someone involved in previous APME coverage that an effort to do something more was discouraged, not unlike lots of newsrooms.)

And frankly, print thinking continues to dominate most digital publication from newspaper-oriented newsrooms. “Web-first” too often means our print-oriented coverage goes online before we print it. We need to move toward a mindset, workflow, planning and execution in which we produce content independently of products, as NPR is doing in its Create Once, Publish Everywhere approach.

This year APME attendees will not receive a newspaper. The convention coverage is all-digital. APME asked me to help them think about how to approach coverage differently without the print focus.

I will not be at the convention, and my plan was for an unlimited number of student journalists covering the convention. Columbia Missourian editors Jeanne Abbott and Jake Sherlock and their student journalists adapted my plan to the students they had and the time they had. But I’ll share some details of the thinking with you here, in case it helps in your coverage of events in your community.

For advance coverage, I suggested a map database showing who was attending the convention, asking in advance such information as:

• Name
• Title (given funky titles these days, including mine, I asked whether they might want a separate field for description)
• Organization
• Photo (I said they should encourage something more fun than mugs)
• Video clips
• Years in journalism
• Twitter username
• Number of staff positions lost in the past year
• Percentage of staff positions lost in the past year
• What’s the organization’s best innovation success in the past year?
• What’s the organization’s best watchdog success in the past year?
• How is the editor scrimping on expenses for APME conference?

Again, for big events in your community, consider what kind of interactive database (map or another format) you might develop in advance to present the people and the issues involved in the event. And, of course, you can see from the last five questions, you can gather information for some advance stories this way as well. You could do this with an online survey. The Missouri students were contacting editors in advance, asking for the information (not sure they used my list; they probably came up with a better one). 

The students launched their convention blog last week, with some helpful posts about things to do in St. Louis.

I suggested that for major sessions of the conference, they could use up to six journalists at once: One doing liveblog play-by-play, one adding context, links and commentary, one liveblog editor (bloggers post directly and editor cleans up behind them), one visual journalist who will contribute still photographs to the liveblog, one visual journalist doing a summary video story, one director of the live online video, taking the video feed showing on the convention hall screens.

Of course, you could streamline this approach a variety of ways for fewer staff members (and I’m pretty sure they will for most sessions): Just taking the convention feed with no monitoring; liveblogging without editing; combining the visual tasks (shoot a couple quick stills for the liveblog, then working on the video); just one writer. Because the students are also covering the Associated Press Photo Managers convention meeting at the same time, they will certainly need smaller crews to cover concurrent sessions when the two groups aren’t meeting jointly. 

Of course, I encouraged strong use of social media. Students will be Twittering throughout the convention as @APME2009 and encouraging APME members who Twitter (not enough do, so we’re hoping this will encourage them) to use the hashtag #APME09. The students have also launched a Facebook page and a Flickr page.

Abbott’s advice to students is great advice for coverage of any event:

Here’s our overarching goal for covering this thing: Be innovative. We’re not going to play by traditional rules. We’re going to be heavy on video, photography and blogging. We’re going to be light on traditional narrative. We’re not going to put everything through 20 rounds of editing – it’s going to be buddy-system editing by everyone. Nobody is going to specialize in just one thing – be ready for some serious backpack journalism.

 And most of all: We want to be immediate.

For my Getting Started with Twitter course tonight, I asked some of my tweeps today for advice.

“How do you use Twitter for business, work, fun? Your best advice?” I asked on Twitter (of course). The answers came quickly:

Jon Konchar, a Cedar Rapids  business broker, tweeted:

Twitter is a gr8t tool to follow local/natl news/events and stay in touch with like/dislike minded folks on issues.

Kathy Potts, a candidate for City Council in Cedar Rapids, answered:

I use it to be able to connect to the community. It’s an easy way to connect outside of my usual social and political circle.

Ian Hill, a journalist from Stockton, Calif., answered:

For business, Dell and others have found success by offering deals to its Twitter followers.

Scott Nelson, a journalist from Portland, Ore., replied (and was retweeted by @MakeMoneyFacebk):

I differentiate between social media. FB for people I know. Twitter for listening to/learning from people I don’t.

Lauri Struve, a radio news director in Madison, S.D., answered:

I use Twitter for fun and to drive traffic to station websites and hopefully get folks to turn on the radio.

Paul Yeager, a producer and host for Iowa Public Television, tweeted:

I use Twitter for all of the things mentioned. Social, work, fun. Its helped meeting new people in same fields easier.

I tweeted again in the evening when the class started and got even more advice. I won’t post it here, but I encourage you to read it.

I did a similar exercise in advance of my Kirkwood course, Using Social Media for Business. That time I direct-messaged local tweeps involved in business and asked how they use social media for business. I posted that advice then.  I’ve edited it here to cover just their advice on using Twitter or social media generally (I did not verify statements they made about their businesses or their us of social media):

Jen Neumann, partner, de Novo Alternative Marketing, says be consistent:

For your class – this is what I say in EVERY SM class I teach:
 
“The key is to do it consistently and consistently well.”
 
Example: Two local businesses started strong but fell off after about a month or two. I really gave up on seeing their specials and as time went on, they faded from my memory too. Tweets from both those places were daily reminders of their existence, as well as their specials.
 
Also, occasional “inside jokes” etc. from businesses are ok, but keep up the relevance to your audience(s) in order to meet their expectations.
 
Good examples of restaurants: Victor’s and Zins.

Jen sent me a Social Media Cheat Sheet, which I posted at Slideshare with her permission.

Jon Konchar, FNBC Iowa, says it’s not the quantity of followers/friends/connections that matters, it’s the quality:

I use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to have a face (profile) out there for when people, especially younger people, are looking for me personally or a business broker.  I use them to check into people I deal with so I assume they also “Google” me and my company.  It is hard to quantify though.  
 
Tips/Experiences:
 
It is not the quantity of followers on Twitter, Friends on Facebook  or connections on LinkedIn that is important, it is the QUALITY.  Sending out “invites” to your entire address book as suggested by these sites is a good way for them to grow the sites user numbers but it is counter productive to you when keeping up to date with the important friends and contacts you have.  The ones you need to focus on get lost in the clutter created and the volume of Tweets, wall posts, and LinkedIn updates.
 
A wise person once said, think twice before you speak.  I think that this applies to social media sites as well (Think twice before you post).  Once it is submitted it is out there for all the world to see forever and ever, even if you delete it.  Remember someone, somewhere, you do not even know has a copy of it.  I think our law enforcement says it best:  “Anything you say (post) can and will be used against you…”

Jessica Palmer, Director of Marketing and Research, Cedar Rapids Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, says remember to include links:

From the CRACVB standpoint, my best tip is to include a link. As a marketing professional, I’ve found  driving the “follower” to a website or more information is the best way to market the attraction or event we are “tweeting” about. I try not to be too repetitive, and to evenly pace my posts throughout the day if I have multiple “tweets”. I also try to make the 140 characters interesting so they spark curiosity and drive the “follower” to go to the link.
 
For the ImpactCR account, which several people update, I post a variety of events/activities. Our audience has a variety of interests and we want to empower and engage people on many fronts in the community, including civic, charitable, leadership and social opportunities.
 
Personally, I use Twitter as a resource for information. I am selective about who I follow, which allows me to filter the info. I receive.  I post “tweets” that are both personal (but not too personal!) and professional in nature.
 
As with any communication tool, it is important to know your audience and be aware of your product and message delivery. Use will vary and is dependent on those key factors.

Anne Wiskerchen, senior public relations specialist at Rockwell Collins Inc., shared some slides on social media use for business, which I have posted on Slideshare with her permission. Some of those tips: 

Look at social media as a part of your overall communications strategy versus a new toy.

Recognize two-way communication is the way of the future.

Social media tools are out there and being used by our employees, customers and media – ignoring them really isn’t an option.

Tools are cheap to use and easy to update and modify, but need to be used wisely.

Get away from old measurement tactics and teach others about new values and measurements.

Emily Mulhbach, media relations manager, Mount Mercy College, says timeliness is important on Twitter:

One of the biggest puzzles I’ve dealt with is how to balance a professional Twitter account against a personal one. The bio line on my Twitter account lists me as media relations manager for Mount Mercy College. Does this mean that everything I post should be work related? Should I assume that all new contacts made through Twitter are professional in nature instead of personal? I’ve come across a few instances when the line seemed a bit blurred. Striking a balance is sometimes hard to do, especially when making new connections strictly through Twitter. I am also very aware that what I post on Twitter can reflect on my institution, even if I do not mean it to.
 
I have only been using Twitter since February, but I’ve also discovered that, like most tools, you get out of it only as much as you put into it. One cannot expect miracles to happen in the social media sphere simply because your organization is using the next mainstream tool. One needs to invest time to organize strategy, a target audience, and a method of communication. You need to dig around to discover the most effective tools, what reaches people and what doesn’t, and how your organization can utilize what is available given the staff’s time and resources.
 
Everything is also much faster on Twitter. Timeliness was never more important – even posting something half an hour late is sometimes too late.

Christopher Smith, Traditions Real Estate, sent a video that answered some questions asked about Twitter in the September class:

He also provided some advice an email:

I use a website called TweetLister that will post all of my listings on Twitter once every day, so that the information automatically comes up on my Twitter page. 

I use Twitter to “network” with two different groups of people.  The first group are people from Cedar Rapids, and surrounding areas.  The second group is Realtors, either from around this area or nationally.

Twitter allows me to post short but relevant “snippets” of information about the current real estate market so my followers will see that I’m a local business person, and that I am in the job that I’m in to educate people about the current real estate market. 

The hardest thing about Twitter is that it does take discipline to say something every day and something that’s relevant.

Twitter is still in its infancy and will continue to evolve and become a huge business tool for those that choose to embrace it. 

Eric Ungs, marketing professional, says make contact by direct-message:

I had left a comment on a Marcos Salazar’s post on the personal branding blog (he’s a guest blogger for Dan; author of Renaissance Worker) and he then started to follow me on Twitter. I then checked out his Twitter page and returned the follow. In his bio it stated his current employments and projects. I sent him a DM stating that my wife had just applied for a position for the exact company in which he is employed at (mind you he is located in Brooklyn, NY) and that I look forward to future conversations. We then had a conversation via DMing and he was genuinely curious to see if she had gotten the position. She is still in the interview process, but he asked me to send him my wife’s resume and he’d forward it on to the appropriate people in the Iowa location “putting in a good word”. This is networking at its finest. I have never met him, my wife has never met him. We have only conversed via DM a couple of times.
 
This shows why social media is so powerful; it creates a number of opportunities and allows you to make connections from all over the country.  People helping, caring, advising, sharing and expecting nothing in return is what social media is about.
 
This concept is how businesses can utilize this type of platform. Reaching out to consumers and caring about what they want and need. Join in on the conversation within your industries topic. The promoting of your business will take care of itself. 

Ray Nelson, The Real Estate Book, says be careful with bulk uploads from e-mail contacts:

I have posted two newbie posts on my blog at www.EastIowaTREB.com. I posted those as I was getting started.

My focus has been business-related and in the real estate market. I have had limited success with Twitter and much better with Facebook. LinkedIn has been OK but no real interaction.

Biggest piece of advice for anyone is chat/update/post what you are interested in. No one cares how long you spent in the bathroom but they might care about how long you spent in the ER with your kid. I guess that boils down to give value with your communication. Whether personal or business each chat/update/post needs value or you will get ignored/unfollowed/unfriended (is unfriended even a word?).

That being said follow/friend local experts (that’s how I started following you), news sources, restaurants and find out who they follow. There is a lot of really good info available from local sources. Don’t not unfollow/unfriend someone just because you don’t agree with their point of view. You can learn a lot by looking at what they think or what they are using for facts (after all yours can be wrong or right).

From a business standpoint be careful who you follow/friend/fan etc. For example if you follow a lot of adult content it can be detrimental to your business unless you are in the adult entertainment industry. I have a friend in the real estate industry who posted her “Who I follow rules” (her social media is all about work).

Last, everything you say is kept forever. Don’t say or do or talk about anything you would be afraid to have your mother/pastor/kids find out about or read. I don’t mean don’t have an opinion or say anything controversial just do so with thought.

Some people to follow/friend:

• state and local politicians (most are using some kind of social media)
• local TV stations
• local newspapers
• local radio stations
• favorite anchors/hosts
• friends
• neighbors
• TV/news for places you are interested in
• national TV/news sources
• local organizations you are interested in or a member of

Dr. Lisa Van Allen says start with the result in mind:

Here are a few tips for your class:
1) Start with the end result in mind.  That means considering what you want out of social media and how you want to be perceived. 
2) Connect, connect, connect!!  It’s called SOCIAL media for a reason.  If all you do is market, people will begin to ignore your message.
3) Business owners need to set up analytics to measure their ROI (investment of time – which is money!) from the beginning. 

Katie Kaalberg, Second Story Promotions, posts fliers on Twitpic:

One thing we have started using Twitter for lately is posting our fliers via Twitpic.  This is great and people seem to retweet them a lot and I like it better than posting a link to back to our website.  We also get great new product ideas from Twitter.  We simply tweet what type of product we are looking for (for example new items for dentists to personalize) and we get great response from suppliers who are following us.  So Twitter is not just a selling tool for us but it is also a great resource for us to get in touch with our vendors/suppliers.

Bill Montgomery, salesman for Copyworks in Coralville, worries about mixing personal and business matters on social media:

Actually, you could use me as an example as I am new to this world myself.  I know this has shaped my perceptions and I think it reflects my limited use of the different forums.
 
I am really interested in using sites such as Twitter and Facebook for business purposes vs. personal use.  I am not comfortable putting a lot of “me” out on the web.  This is my biggest concern with Facebook – I have learned way more than I care to about some of my friends and acquantences.  As such, I am confused on how to use it for business purposes.  It seems facebook is mostly a social site I get the feeling that business posts are almost not wanted.
 
I like Twitter and have been getting a feel on how to use it:  how often, topics, and such.  My thoughts so far:
 
Twitter, too, has a lot of personal posting – more business, but still a lot of personal posting.
 
I am bothered by the use of multiple tweets:  where one person sends several (10 or 12) tweets in a row).  Especially when they are unrelated; e.g. quotes, musings, and maybe the one or two useful tweet such as a link to an informational blog or article.  I don’t mind the consecutive tweets that are used to inform or update some event.  I understand this is more the limitation of 140 characters than anything else.  If a poster has a paragraph to write, several tweets my be necessary to convery the information.
 
Here, my only issue is at times I feel like I’m entering in the middle of a conversation.  I have to dig back to find the source and then work forward.  This isn’t that big an issue, just something I have to be aware of.
 
This also relates to another minor problem with Twitter – the shorthand that is used by some posters.  Some folks are very creative, but the message is confused.  This also reflects my age:  the younger generations seem to have the shorthand down – I prefer complete sentences.
 
I have found some good information on Twitter.  The tweets that contain links to blogs or articles relevant to the topic are very helpful.  I can pursue these at my own pace.
 
As I gain more experience and familiarity I intend to post more.  Right now am comfortable watching and learning.

Stephanie Catlett, New Pioneer Food Co-Op, says consultant provided helpful tips:

We’ve had a lot of success with our social networking project thus far. Due to our own lack of expertise, we hired an outside consultant to get us set up on Facebook and Twitter, and provide us and our staff with training and guidance. 

Tips/Experiences/Frustrations/Successes: Our consultant was invaluable in providing tips for what is appropriate content for a business to provide on a social networking site. At first, we all felt that posting sale prices or great deals would be the best thing to do, but he definitely recommended that hold off on this kind of promotional material, as our “friends” might consider it spam and be annoyed by it. He did recommend posting information on food politics and news, recipes, gardening tips, “green” news, and any new or interesting products that were available in the stores without prices. Anything that would establish us as “thought leaders” or experts in our field. We feel this was invaluable advice and so far we have had very postive comments on our posts.
 
Just today we had a success story when a tweet that I posted yesterday about the new mural on the Iowa City store was viewed by KCRG news, so they came down and did a story about it. Success!
 
We are currently fully managing our own online sites. We’ve opened up posting to any staff members who are interested in doing so. Five members of the marketing team each take one day per week to post (we try to do three posts per day).

Tami Garvin, Public Relations Director, Marketing and Communication Strategies Inc., says the funnel of social media makes the ocean of information a manageable stream:

The Good
 
            I’m a complete news junky. I used to have scrollers and crawlers and alerts and breaking newses, streaming NPR and BBC and CNN, notifications, newsfeeds etc., etc., etc. I have a separate computer on my desk just for the pinging and streaming and crawling. It’s great for my business because I have clients in many industries and fields and to be able to advise and direct them, I need to know what’s going on.
 
            With social media it all comes to me as if through a funnel, making the ocean into a manageable stream. It’s really fast, it’s diversified, it’s customized for me; it allows me to be a complete news hoarder without the clutter. Delightful.
 
The Bad
 
             I love it so much. I heart social media! Yes, that’s bad because I have other things I need to do, like write, go to meetings…sleep.
 
            Also bad: Naked people. Every so often I post this on Twitter and Facebook:
 
Naked people: I’m delighted you have new pics posted, but please don’t follow me. You will find my posts boring; I will find yours the same.
 
(The naked people are seemingly not deterred. I guess it’s valuable to be intrepidly bold if you’re going to be publicly naked.)
 
The Ugly
 
            Foul spammers and vile astroturfing. These shenanigans are thus far not well tolerated. But I’m afraid with their relentless craftiness and snakeoilery, they will wear down and/or overcome the naturally-occurring, rather organic shunning they currently receive and, it seems to me, deserve.
 
            I don’t find these tactics respectful of (let alone effective with), well, people. Marketers and other opportunists have got to keep up with the savvy of people. Otherwise it’s not very “social” of them.

Stacey Hasz, yellowbook, says create a sense of community:

We are currently using Twitter to advertise new job opportunities, updates on my video blog, current events, etc.  Same situation for Facebook.  Our purpose for those is to create a sense of “community”, so when candidates come in for an interview, they know what to expect and already have a feeling for our company culture.  For LinkedIn, I use it to recruit passive candidates for high level positions.

John Schnipkoweit, CTO at Ovation Networks Inc., says don’t try to read 100 percent of social media stream:

The most overwhelming part is the amount of information you will get – and adjusting to that.  I find myself always looking to find a balance for the amount of time spent on each, looking to see 50 percent to 80 percent of the information posted and living with the fact that its impossible to see 100 percent. Using third-party tools to consolidate, sort, and search all that information helps, but often they lack some functionality, and ultimately depend on personal preference/ functionality needed. 

Twitter is a unique animal, in the sense that devoting just a little bit of time to it will potentially connect you with so many new people.  While Twitter is a great way to start a connection, it’s not built to further or really even maintain one. 

One great experience I had with Twitter was last winter, when I tweeted my frustration with attracting young, talented professionals to CR.  I expected advice from others who had been part of the situation before, which I did get, but Priority One contacted me with assistance as well. That DM led to a meeting and with the help of some Priority One marketing collateral, we were able to persuade a candidate to pick our company in CR vs. Google in Mountain View, CA.  Not only was this great for my company, but I think it shows how Twitter is a great broadcast connector which can lead to further communication such as email, telephone, or face to face.  

I’ll be teaching Getting Started with Twitter this Tuesday and Thursday at Kirkwood Community College. This post is designed to supplement the course. It is an updated, adapted version of earlier tip sheets I have done, most recently the Getting started in Twitter tips I provided in August for my Using Social Media for Business class. Those tips, of course, focused on business uses for Twitter. These will include business and personal uses.

• You can follow activities and discussions of people in the community, staying current on issues and events.
• You can connect with colleagues and share ideas with them.
• You can follow the news.
• You can follow funny people and/or people who link to funny things.
• You can follow inspiring people and/or people who link to inspiring things.
• You can follow insightful people and/or people who link to insightful things.
• You can argue politics and find fuel for your political arguments.
• You can “crowdsource,” seeking ideas and suggestions on challenges you are facing.
• You can montior what people are saying about your business, organization or product, responding quickly to complaints and identifying happy customers who might have promotional value.
• You can drive traffic to your web site or blog as you post new content.
• You can meet people (at least digitally and often in person) who share your interests.
• You can get quick information on news, events, weather or traffic or on developments in your community or your field.
• You can connect with and/or monitor actual or potential customers, clients, competitors and vendors.
• I’m sure you can use Twitter in other ways. Please feel welcome to add other uses in the comments.

Getting started

 You can start your Twitter account in just a few minutes and we’ll do this in class today:

• Go to Twitter.com, click “Get Started” and choose your user name. I encourage you to use your own name or your business name as your user name. If you have a common name and a separate profile for the business name (or if you’re an employee and shouldn’t be speaking for the business) and want your own profile for business use, you might consider some combination of your name and the business name. For instance, I used stevebuttry as my Twitter name, but if that name were already taken, I could use something like SteveButtryGaz or SBGazette. You also can use an underscore to see if your real name is available in a different way: Steve_Buttry. If you’re using Twitter primarily for personal enjoyment, and don’t want to use your own name (or if it’s taken), consider using something that says something about you.
• Fill out location and bio. Especially if you use Twitter for business, I encourage you to identify yourself in your profile by real name, position, affiliation and city if you are using Twitter in your business. People are more likely to follow people whose identity is clear.
• Add a picture or a business logo to your profile, too. This also will make people more likely to follow you.
• Include your blog link in your profile, too. If you don’t blog, include a link to your company’s web site, a bio or something else that gives potential followers a chance to learn more about you.
• Don’t protect your updates if you intend to use Twitter for professional or business purposes or if you want to gain followers. Twitter works best when you are open and transparent.
• Click “devices” in your settings and follow the instructions, so you can update and/or receive direct messages on your cell phone. Check to see whether you can use Twitter in your phone’s browser (I can on my iPhone and could when I had a BlackBerry). If you can, you might have options. You should make sure you can use Twitter on your phone. Twitter was developed for sharing of text messages and if you don’t use it on a mobile device, you aren’t getting the full Twitter experience.
• Click the “design” tab and choose a background. If you use Twitter for busienss, you might want to design a background that includes your logo and contact information. (I need to get around to doing that myself.)

Following people

 Be sure to fill out your profile and post a few updates before you follow anyone. When you follow people, some of them will click on your profile and decide whether to follow you. If you haven’t told them who you are and given some idea what you might be like to follow, they will be less likely to follow you. But you should start following some people fairly quickly, because following people is important to getting the full value and experience of Twitter. Most business people who use Twitter as a one-way stream will not be satisfied with the experience.

Choose some people to follow (this means their updates will show up on your Twitter home page).

• At the top of your home page, click “find people.” If you want, you can click “find on other networks” and you can see whether any of your contacts on a gmail, hotmail, Yahoo! or AOL account are already on Twitter. (Don’t spam the ones that aren’t on Twitter by inviting them to join.)
• Under the “Find on Twitter” tab, look for people by name.
• At Twellow, you can check for people to follow in your community or your industry or profession to follow.
• At NearbyTweets, you can see recent tweets from people in or near your community (or a community you will be visiting).
• At WeFollow.com, you can look for people who have chosen topical tags, ranked in order of their numbers of followers.
• As you follow people in your community or colleagues or competitors in your business or profession, take a look at their followers and see if you see anyone there you want to follow.
• When someone follows you, check the profile and the recent tweets to see if this is someone you want to follow.
• When someone you enjoy following replies to someone else with an interesting tweet or “retweets” a link to something interesting, click on the username of the third party and decide whether that’s someone you want to follow.
• Don’t follow too many people too fast. Adding about 10 followers a day for the first week is a good pace. Then add the people you find interesting to follow.
• If you’re not interested in someone’s tweets, you can stop following by clicking on the profile, clicking the arrow next to “following” and then clicking “remove.”

Basic Twitter vocabulary

• @ is how you identify a tweep you are addressing or tweeting about. Put @ in front of the user name (@stevebuttry) and people will know you are addressing or writing about that person. In addition, Twitter will automatically turn the username into a hyperlink to his or her profile.
• Applications. Lots of applications such as TweetDeck, Twhirl andTweetie help you use Twitter more effectively on your computer or phone. You can enjoy Twitter without using any of the applications, though, so I don’t explain them here. Start simple and as you read tweets singing the praises of a particular app that works with your phone or meets a need of yours, give it a try. I do recommend using the Twitter app in Facebook. This way your tweets become your Facebook status updates. While I did receive one complaint from a Facebook friend when I was twittercasting an event and kind of dominated his Facebook page briefly, I get lots of responses from Facebook friends (and the complaining friend is now on Twitter). This way I can stay active in Facebook and Twitter without actually spending much time in Facebook.
• Direct message or DM is a tweet sent directly to another tweet. This should not appear in either person’s public Twitter stream. (But just as some people accidentally reply to a list-serv with a message intended to be private, some people tweet publicly when intending to DM, so DM prudently.) It’s especially easy to make this mistake when DM’ing by text message. If you just reply, you can be tweeting to everyone. To reply by DM, type “d username” (with no @ symbol): “d stevebuttry”
• Fail whale is the graphic you see (featuring a whale) when Twitter is over capacity. This was a frequent frustration in early 2008 when Twitter was growing faster than its servers could handle the traffic but is less of a problem now.
• Favorite. If you really like a particular tweet, you can designate it as a favorite by clicking on the star at the right, which will become visible when your cursor is over the tweet. You can see all your favorites through a link on the right of your home page. (I don’t favorite often.) Twitfave lets you see which of your tweets people have favorited.
• #Hashtags are a tag to help group tweets about a particular event or topic. The tag is designated by # in front of a word (sometimes a couple words without spaces). For instance, I am using #kwtweet for this course. So when you go to search.twitter.com and search for #kwtweet, you should see tweets offering advice. When looking for information on a topic in the news, you might want to try multiple hashtags because they occur spontaneously. For instance, on the flooding in Fargo earlier this year, I found lots of messages using #flood09, #redriver and #fargoflood.
• Reply means to respond to a particular tweet. You can reply by starting a tweet with @username. Or if you click the arrow to the right of the tweet (your cursor must be over the tweet for the arrow to appear), Twitter will fill in the @username start in the window and also link to that tweet (in the “in reply to” type below a tweet), which helps other tweeps (and sometimes the person you’re replying to) understand context. You can read your replies (and any mentions of you) in the @username link in your right rail (helpful when you don’t want to catch up on all the tweets you’ve missed on several hours away from Twitter, but don’t want to miss something about or directed at you).
• Retweet means to pass along something you read from one of your tweeps. You start a retweet with “RT @tweep’sname.” You don’t have to retweet verbatim, though you may if you have room (if the original tweet was the full 140 characters, you will need to condense a little). For instance: “RT @stevebuttry is about to start Kirkwood course, Getting Started with Twitter.” Links are a great thing to retweet. Don’t feel the need to repeat your tweep’s comment about the link. Retweet the link with your own comment. Generally, if you use “RT” in the front, you are using the other person’s words (with some condensation). If you are passing along the link but the comment is all yours, retweet by using “via @username” at the end to credit the other person.
• Tweeps are the people who follow you.
• Tweet, when you post something to Twitter, this is formally called an update, but is better known as a tweet. Can also be used as a verb. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, including spaces.
• Tweetup means some tweeps are gathering physically, often at a restaurant or bar. Join a tweetup in your community sometime.

Linking

One of Twitter’s best uses is to share links to interesting blogs and other web content with people who share your interests. This blows away the argument that Twitter’s 140-character limit leads to shallowness. Your tweet may be little more than “read this” (though I usually make a comment) but if the link takes someone to a blog or site that offers depth and substance, you share way beyond the 140 characters.

• Compress links. Don’t waste your precious character limit on huge URLs. Cut and paste the URL you want to share into one of the web sites that compress URLs for you: tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly or snurl. It couldn’t be simpler: Paste the long URL into the window at the condensing site, hit return and you get your compressed link. With bit.ly (and probably some others), you can later check how many people have clicked the link by adding “+” to the link.
• Write a headline. Tell people what you thought about the link you’re passing along.
• Share links liberally. If you read a good blog or see something online that’s thought-provoking or funny, tweet a quick link to it. You will find that this sharing of links among colleagues is one of the best uses of Twitter.

Your first week on Twitter

I didn’t understand Twitter until I spent a week Twittering pretty seriously when I was at the American Press Institute. I wrote about that week in a couple of blog posts before and after the week. My recommendations for understanding and getting up to speed:

• Tweet about 10 times a day when you’re getting started. That will help you learn Twitter. Then you can speed up or slow down to the pace that’s right for you. (And the right pace is probably an uneven pace – slow when you’re involved in boring meetings, lots of tweets when you’re twittercasting an interesting conference.) A tweet doesn’t take very long, so 10 tweets a day is not a large time commitment.
• Follow about 10 new people a day (many of them will follow you back). Adding too many followers too fast can be overwhelming. But as you add followers, you will get a broader range of views and experiences from your community and your colleagues. I recommend following a mix of people in your community and colleagues around the country (and beyond). Try about 10 new follows a day for the first week, then find the right growth pace for you and your business.
• Reply to some tweets and send some direct messages. Twitter is really about interacting with the tweeps, so you should start having that experience right away.

What should you tweet about?

As with any other writing format, each tweep develops a personal style. Find the right style for you. Some suggestions (reject any that don’t work for you):

• Don’t really answer the question. Twitter’s basic question “What are you doing?” isn’t really answered in most tweets. No one really cares that you’re eating breakfast, unless something funny happened or you read an interesting story at breakfast or found a great new place for breakfast. At a recent conference, I tweeted that I was having breakfast with a couple journalism professors and got two responses (one by DM) on Twitter and four on Facebook. So some people did indeed care about what I was doing for breakfast (I didn’t mention what I ate). Mathew Ingram suggests not answering “What are you doing?” but rather “What am I thinking?” Or, I would add, “What do I want to know?” Jay Rosen says tweeps generally follow two kinds of approaches — “lifecasting,” or tweeting about your activities and interests, and “mindcasting,” or tweeting about what your are reading, learning or thinking.
• If you blog or update your web site, tweet links to new posts on your blog (and then check to see how many page views come from Twitter – and Facebook if you’re using the Twitter app there). If this is all you do, not many people will follow you, unless they really like your blog. But if you are contributing regularly to Twitter discussion, a link to your blog if always appropriate.
• Retweet links when someone in the community tweets a link to something interesting or when a colleague tweets a link to a blog you fon und interesting.
• Reply to people who tweet about your company or product, asking if you can address a complaint, thanking for a compliment or otherwise engaging them appropriately.
• When you have something funny, insightful or inspirational to say, tweet.
• Don’t tweet when you really don’t have anything to say.
• Don’t be too serious in your tweets. Twitter is a bright and breezy communication tool and you’re not going to fully understand it if you don’t experience it the way your tweeps do.
• Don’t tweet about private matters (unless you DM, and even then, be careful). Even if you have a small circle of followers, your tweets can be visible to the public unless you protect them. And if you protect them, you really limit the business use of Twitter.

Consider the appropriate Twitter use for you

Twitter has a variety of business and professional uses. I have asked several Cedar Rapids area tweeps to share their advice for how they use Twitter in a variety of other businesses.  I will give you some of my tips for journalists. Consider whether some similar uses might apply in your work:

• Reporters should follow the feeds of people on their beats. In Cedar Rapids, a couple of county supervisors Twitter regularly, as well as a local state legislator, the county auditor, the art museum director, a local festival director and the director of the downtown business district. Several local institutions, including the city, and business people have Twitter feeds, too. On virtually any beat, some people are Twittering and reporters or bloggers covering those beats should be following them and interacting with them.
• If people in the community follow a journalist on Twitter, they are a quick resource when you’re seeking sources, examples for a story, questions to ask in your reporting or even story ideas. A quick question to your tweeps will frequently bring a response that helps for a story. I have heard lots of examples from my own staff and other tweeps about how this works. Keep in mind that you are crowdsourcing to a small segment of the population, so don’t use this as your only crowdsourcing tool. Take the steps to seek diversity in your sources. But Twitter is a good place to start (and Twitter may help diversify your sources, because the tweeps may be younger than your average news-story source and less likely to interact with the print edition).
• Twitter is valuable for story ideas, either to ask people about a good angle to take on one of those routine or annual stories or simply to follow the community chatter on Twitter and be alert for tips and ideas as they pop up.
• Tweet live coverage of an event, either on Twitter alone or as a feed into CoverItLive.
• When you post to a blog or post a video, story, photo, slideshow, multimedia project or database online, tweet a link and, if you’ve been active enough to develop a lot of followers, you’ll see a bump in traffic coming directly from Twitter.

Breaking news is probably where Twitter shows its greatest value for journalists. You might find it helpful in your field, either to stay abreast of the news or to react to news affecting you directly. My tips for journalists using Twitter to cover breaking news:

• If you’re following lots of people in your community, you may see tweets from some eyewitnesses or some people feeling the impact.
• You can use Twitter Search to search for keywords that might be likely to pop up in tweets about the breaking story, such as “flood,” “tornado” or “crash.”
• You can use Twitter Search to find hashtag discussions already forming around the event, again trying different keywords.
• Search also for photos posted on Twitpic.

Twitter tools

The array of Twitter tools available is too vast to keep up with and I won’t cover them all here. But some basics:

• Twitter Search, by which you can search for the most recent tweets of any terms and also see links to the hottest discussions on Twitter (with an advanced search function to help narrow the search).
• Twitpic, which lets you post photos from your computer or cell phone and tweet links to them.
• Tweetbeep and Tweetscan, which let you search for terms and send you email alerts when someone tweets about you or a topic you care about.
• Rather than using the Twitter web page, many tweeps use applications such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, Tweetie, HootSuite and iTweet to enhance their Twitter experience. These enable following multiple accounts, grouping people you follow and other features. As you learn Twitter, try the applications and clients to find the one(s) that work best for you.
• You can also use applications that coordinate Twitter with Facebook, Flickr, Cliqset, Posterous, FriendFeed and other social tools.

Ethical issues

Whether you plan to use Twitter for work or not, consider how the ethics of your profession (or the particular rules of your workplace) might guide your use of Twitter (or any social media). For instance, you might need to maintain separate business and personal accounts. And even if you do that, your professional ethics might guide what you should do or say on a personal account. Even if you choose to keep your account private, you should regard anything you say on Twitter as a public statement. So you should be careful not to tweet confidential information that would violate privacy of clients, students or patients.

I will review some of the issues I encourage journalists to consider and I hope you give the same consideration to the ethics of your profession or business, however different or similar they may be. The principles of journalism ethics – seek the truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently; be accountable – don’t change, but social networks present unfamiliar circumstances for making ethical decisions. Some matters I encourage journalists to consider and discuss (and some of my thoughts about other businesses, but don’t necessarily follow my advice; decide what’s the appropriate way to act in your business or profession). If you aren’t the boss, it might be a good idea to discuss these issues with your boss:

• Identification. My view is that if journalists might ever use a profile professionally, they should identify themselves by name, position and affiliation. I blogged earlier this year about a journalist in the community who didn’t identify herself (now she does). You need to decide how and whether to identify yourself and your business in your profile.
• Personal vs. professional. Decide whether you should maintain separate personal and professional Twitter accounts. Some journalists do and I respect their decisions. I don’t keep separate accounts. My view is that we need to learn how to use social media tools the way the world uses them and lots of people mix the personal and professional when using social media. So I use my Twitter account for personal and professional communications, but I do so knowing that people are always viewing me as the leader of the content operation of Gazette Communications. So I always conduct myself professionally on Twitter, even if it’s a more casual, personal and fun version of professional conduct than I’m used to. Personal communication helps build the connections that make Twitter a strong form of community connection. I got lots of responses on Twitter and Facebook when I tweeted about my nephew’s leukemia treatment. Again, decide what’s the right personal/professional balance/mix/separation for your business or profession.
• Verification. Reporters should be as careful and skeptical about facts they learn and contacts they make through Twitter as they would be about facts or contacts encountered elsewhere. If accuracy is important in your field, you should be similarly careful.
• Language. The language of Twitter can get pretty casual and foul, with abbreviations such as WTF and BS thrown around casually. If such language is not appropriate in your business or profession, be careful about the language you use.
• Opinions. The Twitterverse can be pretty opinionated. Consider whether opinions should be acceptable in your tweets (and what kinds of opinions) and whether any particular topics might be off-limits for opinionated tweets.

I posted the handout, Journalism ethics in social networks, developed for a seminar for journalists, on my blog. Again, you might want to consider the same issues and how they apply to your business or profession.

Watch for developments

Google and Bing just last week announced deals with Twitter that should enhance searching of Twitter. It’s too early to say for sure how either or both will affect the Twitter user experience. Twitter is also testing a lists function that should allow people to organize their tweeps more effectively.

While I am critical of the Columbia University report, The Reconstruction of American Journalism, I am pleased that it has stirred debate about the future of journalism. Here are the most interesting takes I have seen on the report by Columbia journalism professor Michael Schudson and former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr:

Tom Grubisch ripped into Downie and Schudson in OJR: The Online Journalism Review, calling it the kind of “shallow analysis that typically informs newspaper editorials on big issues.” Be sure to read Robert Niles’ comment. He sees Downie and Schudson as speaking for news industry leaders who “chose to ignore, marginalize or even demonize voices who argued that the news industry must change its procedures, in both editorial and business operations, to compete online.” Now, Niles says, “top news company managers are working their way through the stages of grief.” The Downie/Schudson report, Niles said, represents the stages of anger and bargaining.

Dan Gillmor, a colleague of Downie’s at Arizona State University, warned: “Journalists get government help at some peril.”

Jeff Jarvis said Downie and Schudson reached faulty conclusions by starting with a mistaken ”dire assumption that journalism is dying with newspapers.”

C.W. Anderson, who helped in the research, wrote about the report for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Steve Outing, speculated that the primary audience for Downie and Schudson might well be foundations and philanthropists.

Michael Rosenblum summarized the report as terrible, saying Downie and Schudson had proposed “a tin cup” for an industry that “has to rethink what it is and what it teaches.”

Alan Mutter wrote that the solutions in the report ”range from curiously impractical to startlingly unoriginal.”

Michele McLellan said the proposal for federal funding “sends us down a garden path of wishful thinking when we need to hit the highway of innovating business models.”

Ian Hill blogged that media operations would take huge amounts of government money and philanthropy, far more than would be realistic to expect. A second critical post, Hill noted that we need to take into account the needs of the market as we seek solutions. In a separate post, Hill said Downie and Schudson were right in saying there is no easy answer and that we need to market the news. He also responded to my Schudson’s and my remarks about social media (I’m not the only one writing a lot on this topic).

Rick Edmonds summarized the report for Poynter Online, not commenting at length but noting that government funding “may prove a tough sell politically or a flawed concept.”

Poynter’s Bill Mitchell looked at the reaction to the Downie/Schudson report (linking to me and others that I also link to here).

Joel Kramer, CEO of MinnPost, acknowledged some of the problems in federal funding of accountability journalism and proposed a way to insulate the journalism from political pressure.

Columbia Journalism Review compiled responses from Jan Schaffer (“mile-wide, inch-deep reportage”), Martin Langeveld (suggesting a public-service Report for America project) and others. Schudson responded to them in a single post.

Steve Yelvington called the report a good read for college journalism students, “But as a vision, well, don’t get your hopes up.”

Jim Barnett noted that as more interest groups undertake journalism, defining who would receive federal subsidies could become problematic.

For overviews of the report, without heavy commentary, try Mac Slocum or David Carr.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I have written about this issue myself (and posted Schudson’s responses to me):

• My initial criticism
• Schudson’s response
• My reply
• One more take from Schudson 

I’m sure I’m missing some. Please add them in the comments.

Michael Schudson accepted my invitation to continue our discussion about The Reconstruction of American Journalism. I  blogged critically Monday about his report with former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. Schudson responded Thursday and I replied today . I recommend reading the other links, if you haven’t yet, before reading this. Schudson is a journalism professor at Columbia University. This is his most recent email to me: 

I have a different picture of our journalism history than you do. 

Yours is close to the conventional story that American journalists have long told themselves — it just happens not to be true. (Take a look at Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media or an important work that Starr draws on, Richard John’s Spreading the News.)

The First Amendment is a somewhat mysterious document since the founders — including Jefferson — appeared to understand it to mean that the FEDERAL government should not interfere with freedom of the press but that STATE governments should feel free to prosecute newspapers for criticizing an incumbent administration. (See Jefferson’s famous 1803 letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas McKean.) There were no significant uses of the First Amendment to uphold press freedom until after World War I. What encouraged the growth of newspapers more than the First Amendment was the Postal Act of 1792 that greatly encouraged the establishment of post offices and post roads connecting them at a time when many newspapers circulated through the mails — and the Act provided newspapers a PREFERENTIAL POSTAL RATE — per weight, newspapers were much cheaper than letters to mail. And newspapers mailed to other newspapers could be sent through the post free — effectively establishing a primitive Internet since essentially all newspapers in the 1790s and early 1800s were “aggregators,” reprinting news items from other newspapers. The government paid for the first working telegraph line in the United States. The government developed with taxpayer money the prototype Internet (ARPANet).

In my view, the government is not a funder of last resort. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws “abridging” press freedom but does not prohibit Congress from making laws or appropriations “concerning” the press.

I think it is important to re-tell the tale of American journalism and to truly understand how valuable government interventions have been in constructing American journalism. It is important to think carefully about where government could be a positive factor in reconstructing American journalism at a time of substantial (but by no means total) market failure. With vital public information, as with health care, I think a “public option” should be on the table. It is not easy but it is possible to do this right — the devil’s in the details, not in the principle of the thing.

By the way, I would be happy to learn more about successful for-profit on-line community news sites that report on local government and other major local sites of power. I’ll be interested to take a look at The Batavian, I did not know of it. So I’m very grateful for this exchange.

I, too, am grateful for the exchange. I don’t feel a need to get the last word in, so I won’t respond to Schudson’s remarks about journalism history. In response to Shudson’s invitation to tell him more about successful for-profit online community news sites, I am aware of some but not knowledgeable enough to discuss them without research. I hope that someone does some thorough research of such community operations, their financial condition and their efforts in accountability journalism. That was a gaping hole in the Downie/Schudson report and would be a valuable contribution to this discussion. I do think that my Complete Community Connection, if fully implemented, would support a strong accountability journalism operation. I hope someday to prove that.