Brian Moritz asks a question you face in almost every newsroom addressing the challenges of digital journalism: How do you “convert” the curmudgeons?
In a comment on my recent blog post providing social media resources for journalists, Brian, a Syracuse graduate student, asked:
There are some reporters (mainly older vets, but a surprising number of young ones, too) who just do not like Twitter. At all. Think it’s a waste, that it’s ruining our craft. Won’t even give it the time of day. How do you convert these people? How do you get them to the point where they are willing to even honestly give Twitter a chance?
I have two responses: one optimistic and helpful and one dismissive.
First, the helpful, optimistic response: I believe we all learn and grow at different rates and in different ways.
If a good journalist is still resisting Twitter use, I would try to identify the reason. If the reason is that he or she doesn’t understand how Twitter can make you a better journalist, I show how you use Twitter’s advanced search tool to find eyewitnesses to breaking news events. I’m not saying this converts everyone (nothing does), but it’s hard to dismiss Twitter as useless when you see concrete examples of its value.
Sometimes the resistance is based in fear that an old-school journo can’t learn this new skill. In that case, some instruction helps people see how useful it really is and how easy it is to use. I would share my Twitter tips for journalists or try some personal coaching or a workshop (or all three). Twitter (as Brian knows) is easy to use and easy to learn. You can overcome this fear pretty quickly if you can just help the reluctant journalist get started.
Sometimes the resistance might be based in being overworked and feeling you don’t have time to learn Twitter or make good use of it. Here you need to show how quickly you can use Twitter, how it saves you time searching for sources, how you can use Twitter lists and tools such as advanced search, TweetDeck and HootSuite to organize tweets so you can search and monitor Twitter efficiently. I’d share my Twitter time management tips.
Some people have valid ethical questions or concerns. I discuss how to vet and verify social media sources and information.
I would point out some respected journalists using Twitter. I’d ask what makes you think you’re better than Nicholas Kristof, Jake Tapper, Ann Curry or Roger Ebert, who make outstanding use of Twitter? I recently provided some coaching to a journalist who had procrastinated about getting started on Twitter. She knew she needed to be on Twitter, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. I knew she was a big fan of Kristof (“hero” was the word she had used in an unrelated email). I noted he was a big Twitter user. Now she’s using Twitter.
I also would make the point that I don’t care whether journalists like Twitter. I don’t like interviewing grieving relatives about their deceased family members. But it’s an important part of journalism. It has produced lots of great stories for me (and it has given family members an opportunity to tell people about the loved ones they had lost). Every job has some important and legitimate tasks that we don’t like. Professionals do what good journalism demands, and today good journalism demands social media skills, like it or not.
I also would consider the journalist’s overall skills and attitude. Maybe this journalist is a standout at some other aspect of digital journalism, such as databases, blogging or video. Most journalists are going to have more successful careers if they embrace and master multiple digital skills. But someone who excels at one digital skill is probably going to get a little slack if resisting use of Twitter (or something else) than someone who is resisting digital journalism generally.
And traditional journalism skills still matter. I’m not very patient with curmudgeons, but I’ll be more patient with someone whose reporting, writing, editing, photography or design skills are outstanding than with someone who’s just pretty good at traditional skills. But that patience is wearing thin. The value of digital journalism skills rises almost daily, and any journalist who is denying the value of Twitter is ignoring years of evidence in thousands of stories. I don’t have much respect for journalists who are stubborn about ignoring facts. Soon, that trait will show up in news coverage, and that has never been good journalism.
Let’s be honest: In many cases, the journalists Brian describes have made a career choice to hang their future on nostalgia and wishful thinking. I can’t make their wishes come true, and I don’t want to.
Twitter has been proving its value to journalists for at least three or four years now. I am under no illusion that I have such wonderful persuasive ability to change the thinking of someone who has been ignoring the changing world that willfully and that long.
I have lots to do helping journalists who want to be part of the exciting digital future of journalism. I won’t waste much time and energy on people who have decided not to join that future.
as one of those curmudgeons, I have to say that you sound like someone who’s already got his mind made up. You may be right, but you also sound like a know-it-all with an attitude.
I won’t bother wishing you good luck on your career in journalism — sounds as if you’ve got all the answers.
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Already have my mind made up? Did you read this? I identified at least a half-dozen different reasons journalists resist learning a tool that has repeatedly proven its value. I don’t know it all and have never claimed that I do (I would like to develop better skills in video and data analysis, for instance). In social media, I am continually learning from Mandy Jenkins, Jeff Sonderman and Andy Carvin, who know considerably more than I do.
I suspect you’re the one who has your mind made up. But if you’d like to grow professionally and learn to use Twitter to become a better journalist, I’d be happy to help.
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Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my question.
In my thesis defense earlier this year, this question came up. When I articulated this opinion that some journalists have toward Twitter (and Charlie does, apparently), one of my committee members said “This isn’t like eating your vegetables. It doesn’t matter whether they like it or not.” And I think there’s something to that. I really like your comparison of talking to bereaved families. Sometimes, you have to do things you don’t like as part of the job.
I guess I don’t think Twitter and other forms of social media are fundamentally antithetical to good journalism. I do think that once people start using Twitter, they are able to see how it is useful and can help them do their jobs better.
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Thanks for the thoughtful question that prompted this post, Brian, as well as for this response. I am quite sure that Twitter and other social tools are not antithetical to good journalism. They’re just tools. Some journalists will use them wisely. Others will misuse them. Same as any other tool: notebook, cell phone, spreadsheet.
I’ll also add that many good friends — journalists whom I respect — share Charlie’s view of Twitter. Each time one of them loses a job as our industry contracts, I am deeply grieved. I remain glad to help people who have waited this long to attempt to catch up, and I do it regularly. But I no longer waste my time trying to persuade those who don’t want to change.
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it’s not a question of not wanting to change, steve — I’ve changed a lot, done a lot, and i take offense at the comments in your post about your lack of patience and that crap about hanging my future on nostalgia — that shows an attitude that offends me.
i blog as regularly as the schedule allows, have 700-plus facebook “friends” and have a twitter account that i cannot see anyone paying attention to, and which I rarely follow because it seems to be nothing but a long series of non–sequitors 140 characters long, mostly from people trying to sell me something and other journalists trying to boil a complex story down to 140 characters and failing.
I might have more time to learn twitter and the magic it can show me and my career, but i’m too busy doing the jobs of the two or three younger reporters who did use twitter a lot, left (NOT for more twitter-wise jobs) and haven’t been replaced because, I have to assume, the paper didn’t see the value their twittering brought to the paper justified maintaining their salaries and nobody is putting money into traditional journalists. I DO know the editors watched them twitter away over there and grumbled about not having enough news stories from them.
So now I’m the columnist (my real job), the cop reporter two days a week, the political reporter, the human services reporter and the general assignment reporter. My newspaper says the wave of the future is social media, but I get more reaction, daily, from the 60,000-plus people who get the paper than I do from the several hundred, or thousand, I’ve managed to connect with through social media.
I put a plea, recently, out for donations to help wounded vets. I put it on twitter, facebook and the paper, with electronic links on-line. I monitored donations from each — the electronic donations were $400, the donations from people who read the paper, wrote a check and put it in an envelope totaled $15,000.
newsprint may be dying, but it still works.
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Charlie, Thanks for this thoughtful response, which gave a better picture of your value to your news organization than the first. You’re right, newsprint still works. The audience is large, even though it is shrinking quickly.
Please note that I said that some journalists who have demonstrated their skill in other digital pursuits, such as blogging, I’m more inclined to cut them some slack for their weakness in social media.
And let’s be clear: You have described someone who is weak in social media. If you think that I (or anyone who understands Twitter) have said that you should use Twitter primarily to boil stories down to 140 characters or to make pitches for donations, you still don’t understand. Those are valid things to do with Twitter, but they are not the primary reasons you should use Twitter. You should use it to do better journalism.
You cover cops two days a week. If you aren’t using Twitter’s advanced search routinely in covering breaking stories, a competitor who knows how to search Twitter will kick your ass. You’ve described yourself as a busy journalist who doesn’t have time to use Twitter. But that competitor will be saving time on breaking stories by connecting more quickly with eyewitnesses and people who have been affected by crimes, accidents, fires and the like. (That’s just one example; it is similarly useful for politics, human services, GA and working on columns.)
I used to get great stories using my desk phone, but I embraced the cell phone as a tool that helped me save time (sometimes) and be a better reporter. Same with Twitter.
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Love your ideas to at least encourage others to give it a try. Sometimes it seems many people need to completely understand the something before giving it a try. There is nothing wrong with that style. However, I sense that I am of your makeup: see who is getting the results I want and then give their method a try.
On a personal note, I am truly amazed how many real opportunities have been created in the short time I have been on twitter…yes some cocktail talk on twitter but some ‘real business” occurring offline as a result of interaction that began on twitter.
Keep sharing…know you will!
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I think Charlie raises some very real questions, some that have come up in my own research (new and limited that my research career is). The time issue is a real one, and I remember feeling that crunch in my sports reporter days. Steve’s right in that social media can save you time, but when you’re covering three beats instead of one and feeling like you’re always just putting out fires instead of doing real, deep work, adding social media can feel like another thing to check off the list.
Also interesting in Charlie’s response is the notion of bosses not caring. This, from my own experience, is a huge problem moving forward. My old bosses would have had the same view that Charlie’s would – all this social media stuff is nice, but when are you going to get to your “real work” (the print story). That can be hard for even the most determined reporter to overcome.
I will say that I dislike the “print-vs.-online” dichotomy that dominates these discussions. Online does a lot of things better than print. And print still does things better than online. It’s not a matter of one or the other. It’s using both to be the best journalist possible. Used well, in the hands of a veteran reporter who’s got the shoe-leather experience and tattered phone book of contacts, Twitter can make that reporter even better.
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I would ask if you’re following people on your beat. Are you following the kind of people who will tweet when they wonder why the sheriff’s helicopter is hovering over their neighborhood? (I look for those people to follow.) For a journalist, the following and listening is as important as what you say on Twitter.
Are you searching for keywords on your beat? Have you made those keywords a bookmark, a tab or a feed?
I’d look at how a person’s equipment is set up. If you only open your browser when you have to do something, then Twitter doesn’t seem worth it. Open the web browser, go to Twitter, try to remember your sign-on, OK now what — I don’t see a story here. That’s not how it works. Twitter works best when it’s a half-second away from your fingertips. Slide over, check it while you’re waiting for something else. (For someone to call you back. For an editor to read your story.) The person who comes in, opens the web browser for the day and opens tabs for pages they’re going to be checking — that person will get more out of Twitter.
The journalist who has a smart phone already set up to do this comes to work ahead of the game. Personal smart phones for work use is a touchy subject, but when it comes to social media, I figure: You have personal ears; you hear things; you turn them into stories — same with social media.
The time issue is made into a bigger problem than it needs to be, if we think of social media as “publishing.” You have to cover the story, then write the story, and now you have to write something for Twitter? And publish it on Facebook?
But that’s not how it works. If you have time to send an email to an editor, a source or another reporter about what you’re working on, you have time to tweet. You’re telling people things all day long. Tell them with social media.
I understand that it can seem daunting at first, and the benefits don’t seem obvious. That’s one reason I look at how someone is equipped. Small differences in usability make a big difference in what a journalist gets out of social media. Many newsrooms aren’t set up for that “half-second away” approach.
But there needs to be some tough love, too. Sometimes when I hear journalists complain about having to use social media, I hear: “You mean I have to answer my phone? And read my mail? AND listen to the police scanner? Jeez, when will I have time to do my work?”
I think of Twitter as the police scanner of regular people. How much time does it take to listen to the scanner in the newsroom? How much time does it take to chat up the folks at the cop shop about last night’s ball game, developing sources along the way?
I could give a list of story tips, big and small, that came via Twitter: An iconic local diner that never closes is going to close for good the next night. A doctor I already follow tweets that she just shook hands with a Supreme Court justice who is making an unannounced visit to a local hospital. A transcontinental celebrity road rally is coming through and exotic sports cars are being pulled over on the Thruway. I could go on, but by now it’s such an ingrained part of the job that it doesn’t seem special. In our city, the fire department now tweets all dispatches of working house fires.
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Thanks to all for the great discussion here, both those who agree with me and those who don’t. I think this kind of candid give and take makes us all better journalists. Thanks also to Kevin Sablan for posting this link to Facebook’s Social Journalism group, where another discussion ensued. Kevin and Melissa Bell gave me permission to use their comments here:
Melissa: You know what I’ve found to be the single most effective conversion tool? Getting the reporter to tweet a live event. Sometimes we overwhelm people with all the great uses of the new tools and forget the most basic approach. Just ask them to do what they’ve always done: observe and jot down their thoughts. Only ask them to do it on Twitter and not just in a notepad. They get to see their thoughts have an effect in real time. People respond to it. They see it doesn’t take much of an effort to put down the pen and pick up the phone. Every time a journalist has tried it, they go, ‘Hmm… This twitter thing isn’t so bad.’ Once they realize it has one use, it’s not hard for them to find others.
Melissa again: Admit it will take a few seconds of juggling phones and notepads, but ask they try it once before they knock it. As extra encouragement, we have set up blogposts with their live tweet streams so they can see their work on a Washington Post page. I think it helps make them feel like it’s work that’s going to the paper, and not just out in the Twitter ether.
Kevin: Some of our reporters have found that tweets can serve *as* notes, so tweeting ends up killing two birds with one stone.
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Steve,
I started my career 37 years ago, running film to the film lab at ABC News and marking/shipping film reels to overseas clients. From that job I started writing and producing news pieces — but by then, it was on 2″ videotape reels. Those eventually became 1″ reels, then videotape inside a plastic shell. And now it’s online/digital/social media. I couldn’t have survived all these changes were I not willing to adapt and adopt the new tools of the trade. And that’s something I think is also getting lost in the discussion — Twitter is a TOOL. It is not a replacement for digging to get the information behind a story and it is not a replacement for writing the great article/script/post. It helps get you to that place. I admit it took me a while to warm up to Twitter, but now I use it as part of my daily routine. That said, it isn’t the be-all and end-all of journalism in the 21st century; in fact, I’m willing to bet something will come along within the next ten years to supplant it. But while it’s here, I’ll keep working with it and refining my use of it.
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Steve,
Your ‘curmudgeon’ commenter Charlie may benefit from some more concrete examples of Twitter-based sources. Charlie, there is no need to become one of the young journalists you’re talking about who, it sounds like, you feel spent too much time playing on social media. You can simply use it occasionally, just like you would use any more traditional source.
Check out a few of the government agencies here in the District of Columbia that are using Twitter. On Election Day, I suspect you would find my agency’s feed to be a helpful reference on where the stories are (@DCBOEE). In a snowstorm, evacuation or other traffic event, you would probably find @DDOTDC to be helpful. Or if you were writing a story on permitting, I think you would find content leads at @DCRA. You can do the occasional “I wonder what people are saying about X on Twitter today, let’s go to http://www.twitter.com and type that name/word into the search box” without having to spend hours every day chuckling at non-sequitors on TweetDeck.
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Here’s my “how I got converted” story:
http://erikgable.com/2009/11/01/confessions-of-a-curmudgeon-why-i-used-to-mock-twitter-and-what-changed-my-mind/
I have to say, though, that I’ve pulled back from trying to live-tweet events, except in special circumstances. I can write longhand so much faster than I can compose a message on a smartphone keyboard that it causes problems for me unless (a) there’s another reporter present who’s taking notes the traditional way, or (b) I have a recorder running and can go back later to pick up the quotes I missed.
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I agree with you about resistance. But it not just veteran journalists. Many, many journlaism undergrads resist as well. They experience Twitter as celebrity, entertainment nonsense as well as meet-up communication and do not really believe that Twitter had anything to do with the Arab Spring. One student wrote on my CTECs (course teacher evals) that I required students to have a Twitter account so I would have more followers! So thanks for giving
me another link for course documents…
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If I wrote or implied that age or experience defined curmudgeons, I apologize and correct. Yes, lots are my age (56) and older. But we do have way too many youthful curmudgeons and, thankfully, lots of aging digital pioneers.
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allyson,
I’m not so sure I like the word “curmudgeon” in this situation, although it is a title i normally wear with pride.
When it comes to technology, I prefer to think of myself as a realist who can sometimes be swayed by a pretty face. I use Mac computers, I even have a digital camera for pointing and shooting my grandkids, but I’ve been slow to adopt digital photography because I really like my old Leicas and, what the heck, film is the original “raw” format and won’t be made obsolete any time soon by the latest wizz-bang toy. I’ve already gone through three digital cameras…(sigh) while the 50-year-old leica plows on.
But I digress.
You say to use twitter to check out government agencies — you DO realize I am a newspaper reporter, right? I am well aware that government agencies put out a lot of information, and no doubt love twitter because it allows them to put a lot of stuff out there and tell people, “Hey, we told you about this, it was on twitter.”
This is not me being a curmudgeon. This is the realism coming in — will your or any government agency be sending out a tweet any time soon about the way funds were used to pay for prostitutes by the guys who were supposed to be inspecting oil well safety (just to pull up one random example)?
I’m guessing not. So while government tweets may be worth checking out, and are certainly easier than government reports on paper to wade through, they have their limits for the news reporter.
I have no problem with social media. I find people to talk to about stuff, and even learn of things needing coverage, on Facebook all the time. Need three quotes on something quick? No problem.
But none of this substitutes for the time honored method of getting out of the office, away from the computer, and chatting up the people sending the tweets in person. I can’t count the number of stories I find in government offices by simply standing there and watching what they do, because they think it’s normal, ho-hum, every day stuff, but I know it’s something else.
How much normal, ho-hum every day stuff do you tweet? Probably not a lot.
Everything is a tool and tools have to show their worth or they aren’t worth buying, however valuable they may be pitched.
To play the old guy card (I’m 62, been in the business 41 years) I’ve seen them come and I’ve seen them go. I had a Myspace page, I tried valiently to do podcasts (remember those? They were the wave of the future, were going to save the business) and on and on. It remains to be seen whether Twitter lasts longer than 5 years, or is replaced by something spiffier and easier for someone like me to use.
Twitter may turn out to be a worthwhile tool, or it may not. Finding the nugget in the endless stream of dreck flowing by my own twitter feed is hard enough — perhaps a twitter dock would simplify that? But then having something constantly bleeping at me on the screen would make it impossible for me to do a good job of writing the column that readers tell me they look for. I dunno. I’m busy enough monitoring Facebook, three email accounts, the web to see if the competition has a story we should be covering too and keeping one ear on the scanner.
Mr. Buttry has a tough job, I suspect. His company, I learn from that there newfangled thing called the Internet, emerged from bankruptcy in 2009 and, earlier this year, was bought by someone who is rapidly converting it into a digital-emphasis news corporation with an eye to being the future. If he works for people with that goal, no wonder he is pitching Twitter so heavily.
I wish him, them, success (the same company now owns my competitor, the Salt Lake Tribune) but will wait and see if they’re any more successful at turning didgits into cash flow — their latest press release claims a 70 percent increase of revenue in one quarter, but doesn’t say 70 percent of what and doesn’t say whether they’re meeting their mortgage payment.
Speaking of time wasters: Erik Gable: Take it from an old guy — throw away your tape recorder and learn to take shorthand. Tape recorders keep you from hearing what people are saying, and taking part in the conversation, because you figure the tape has it, you can go over it again later. Shorthand (gregg is a good system, easy to learn) allows you to write down the quotes you will need to highlight the story you damn well should be writing in your head during the interview.
If you have a tape recorder, you also have to go back to the office and listen to all that crap again — and wasn’t most of it boring enough the first time?
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Charlie,
I welcome your opinions, but I don’t allow errors in fact to go uncorrected here. You have misstated Journal Register Co. history and my role here. John Paton launched the company on its Digital First strategy last year, more than a year before Alden Global became the sole owner. Alden Global bought the shares of JRC it did not already because it liked the results. I joined JRC because of my own enthusiasm about the strategy and the results so far, including financial success. John spells out more about our financial success in his latest blog post: http://jxpaton.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/digital-first-the-next-step/
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But i will be blogging and, yes, tweeting this conversation….@ctrentelman, or somethinglike that.
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I stand corrected. Thanks, and good luck.
ct
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Charlie: Other than being in total agreement that note-taking is better than a tape recorder, I suspect there’s little else we could agree on. I wonder if you read Brian Cubbison’s comment above? I thought he made some excellent points and I wonder what your response is.
I wanted to make one comment and it’s about you saying “Finding the nugget in the endless stream of dreck flowing by my own twitter feed is hard enough…”
This is a self-created problem and I think that should be perfectly clear. The obvious question is: why are you following accounts that are mostly serving up drek? It’s like someone going grocery shopping, buying foods they don’t like and then looking in their refrigerator and exclaiming “I have nothing to eat!” So I think you can see how this isn’t a serious criticism of Twitter as a tool for journalists or anyone else. Basically, the tool isn’t worthy of dismissal simply because you’ve failed to use it properly.
Your comments about government agencies’ Twitter feeds isn’t a serious criticism either. No, of course no one is going to post evidence of malfeasance or anything negative on their official agency feed. Would they give it to you in a press release or at a press conference? This is no different. There is still value in knowing the official, party line version so that we can then compare and contrast that with what we’re able to find out is happening behind the scenes. I’m sure you would agree that it’s important to present both for readers so that they themselves can learn to discriminate between spin and what’s really going on.
And while there may not be such a thing as Twitter investigative journalism, I recently heard someone say that if Woodward and Bernstein were working today, Deep Throat would probably tweet them from an anonymous account. Before you laugh, think about it. It’s actually pretty plausible. I’ve gotten tips for stories on Twitter and I’m sure I’m not the only one. And while it’s unlikely that you’re going to win a Pulitzer as a result of a Twitter tip, I’m sure your more humble daily aspirations to inform your audience could be helped by having an open ear in a place where communication is highly casual and open and people’s guards are often down.
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Thanks to Poynter’s Mallary Tenore for this post, which shows the variety of ways Twitter can be useful to reporters. I would encourage sharing this with reporters who need help seeing the usefulness of Twitter or think it’s just for posting links to their latest stories: http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/146345/10-ways-journalists-can-use-twitter-before-during-and-after-reporting-a-story/
And thanks to Anna Tarkov for pointing it out to me.
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This lively discussion has continued on Charlie’s blog, where he blogged about this. I have joined others in responding there, including a colleague of Charlie’s who provides some excellent examples of Twitter’s usefulness:
http://blogs.standard.net/blogging-the-rambler/2011/09/19/tweets-for-the-twits-hard-to-say
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