Courtney A. Watson

The transparency argument

Two newspaper pieces I read this week showed me that we really might be turning the corner when it comes to getting rid of the “journalist as gatekeeper of information” idea that’s so detrimental to our industry’s future.

One was Ian Shapira’s “The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition)” in the Washington Post, which deals with a topic all journalists are grappling with now–how blogs like Gawker are using our words, linking to our work and generally changing the way we do things.

The other was The New York Times‘ ongoing The Public Editor column, which this week dealt with a series of embarrassing errors in a story about the late Walter Cronkite.

Neither piece was particularly flattering to the industry–the Post piece discussed newspaper companies’ terrible financial situations, and the Times story was about, well, embarrassing errors.

But what both have in common is that they lift the veil off the process of journalism to show what we do and think during the process of our work–warts and all. Some newspaper industry folks aren’t comfortable showing this side yet, and it’s to their detriment.

In the age of social media, the public wants to know us–even if that means knowing we make mistakes and are worried about keeping our jobs. It’s what makes us real, and there can be no trust in our message without that. Would you rather get your news from an omniscient narrator — or a trusted friend?

Uh oh

In the midst of summer vacations, getting engaged and planning a super-fast fall wedding (no way I’m dragging this thing out for a year), I’ve kind of forgotten recently to keep up my usual ruminating and hand-wringing about the media.

But over the past few days, two things shook me out of my white tulle fog.

The first was a conversation with a city planner friend in Cincinnati, in which she dismissed the city’s Cincinnati Enquirer as biased and generally lackluster and said she favors the blogging scene instead. “Yeah,” I said, “but if blogging takes the place of actual, professional news reporting, who’ll cover the four-hour long planning commission meetings and do all the other unglamorous stuff newspapers do for the sake of a free society?”

Uh oh. Apparently there are at least a few Cincinnati bloggers who already do cover all the unglamorous stuff, too. And there goes that previously sound argument.

Then came this NPR story about a one-woman, volunteer news bureau focusing on Iran, which perfectly explains why someone would get into journalism–uncovering truths, being a part of something bigger than yourself, and feeling like your work has a deeper meaning than any mere “job”.  Except when I do these things, I still expect to get paid for it, too.

Is that asking too much? I’ve never thought so–I mean, journalists cerntainly don’t get paid very much.  But these days, the tide seems to be turning about paying for journalism at all. And although I’m somewhat concerned about what that would mean for my own livelihood, I’m more concerned about what it could mean for all of us.

Charities harness social media’s power

The power of social media to change the way traditional print media outlets like newspaper do business is pretty obvious, but I only recently began to grasp how useful it is for non-profits and charities.

The success of February’s Twestival should have tipped me off–the nationwide event raised $250,000 for clean water projects in Ethiopia, Uganda and India. And Nashville’s participation certainly garnered some attention — there were at least five  Tennessean staffers there (I’d link to the article Rachel Stults wrote about the event if only our archives went back more than two weeks).

Most recently, sites like Mashable have begun campaigns like Tweet to Beat Leukemia, benefiting The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and Tweet to Beat Malaria, benefiting Malaria No More.

It’s exciting to see worthwhile charities harnessing the viral power of Twitter to get their message out on a free, popular platform. And as more celebrities get involved with social media, the potential will only grow (see: Ashton Kutcher and malaria nets). The possibilities are great, as MediaShift lays out in this fairly comprehensive piece.

Social media and self-promotion

I recently revisited my LinkedIn page–the site of my very first foray into social media.

Long since put on the back burner in favor of tweeting, friending, blipping, scrobbling, blogging and other online pursuits, my career networking page–less than a year old–was already like an ancient artifact showing me just how far I’ve gone down the rabbit-hole of social media.

I saw just how timid I had been back then–reaching out only to my closest friends and colleagues, downplaying my strengths, not bothering to ask anyone for a word in my favor for fear of putting someone out.

Everyone knows it’s as much about who you know as what you know, but traditional “networking” has never come very easily to me. That’s a big part part of why I got into journalism–I’d rather hear your story than talk about me.

But social media–with its emphasis on genuine conversations and connections over heavy-handed self-promotion and advertising, has shown me that you can hear both stories–that in fact you need both sides for the conversation to work.

I updated the page, of course, asked for recommendations–oh, and added a LinkedIn widget here. Because I’m all about self-promotion now. Within reason.

Really, Internet?

Today is April 1, aka April Fool’s Day. I haven’t thought of it as the latter for a number of years, mainly because I didn’t spend all day getting punk’d–until now.

What changed? Well, I’m more plugged in than ever before, and apparently the Internet is the last place in the world where it’s a blast to go around spreading merry misinformation all day.

YouTube turned all its videos upside down. Jezebel announced the end of comments. Google did whatever this is. Even London’s The Guardian newspaper got in on the act, announcing a new plan to relay the news solely in Twitter posts. Locally, this happened — or didn’t, actually.

Coming from an old-school news background (this whole post is making me sound like a crotchety 97-year-old, so why not go with it?), it’s hard to make heads or tails of this. Clearly, audiences are having fun with it, but could a newspaper around here ever pull a similar prank?

Seems unlikely. When you spend all day thinking about building and maintaining audience trust, it seems counterintuitive to squander it–particularly when it’s pretty much all we’ve got going for us at the moment. Or are we just missing the joke?

The Twitter tornado

Yesterday there were tons of storms, tornado watches and warnings in the Nashville area, including some serious ones in Williamson County, where I’m a community news editor for The Tennessean.

Normally when this happens, I’m glued to the local news stations and their Doppler radar, trying to figure out whether it’s getting serious enough to call reporters, drive in to the office, etc. This time I just got on Twitter and got the news straight from Williamson A.M.’s more than 350 followers (update: now it’s closer to 900–social media moves fast).

In real time, I got reports on who was seeing hail, viewed pictures of ominous storm clouds and heard about the parts of town where the storm had already passed over to leave the sun shining again. Nothing I know of is faster or more accurate than that.

While making fun of Twitter is something of a national pastime at the moment, it’s becoming invaluable for news organizations in time-is-of-the-essence situations like tornado warnings. Newspapers should do all we can to embrace it for the tool it can be for us.

Starting this blog

There’s never been a more exciting time to be a journalist.

There have certainly been nobler and more glamorous times for the business. Pretty much any other time has been more stable — furloughs and layoffs aren’t exactly the kind of things that make you feel secure about your job.

But maybe security is overrated in the middle of a media revolution of this scale. It’s exhilarating to think about how things will look when we come out on the other side.

Like lots of other people, I have some thoughts on what will survive and thrive in the industry’s future — concepts like giving readers what they want (not what we think they need) and allocating resources to true community journalism that’s entrenched and homegrown. I’ll be using this blog to explore those kinds of ideas.