My tweets of the last week:
Personal
News by appointment, or news right now?
Do you get your news by appointment, or do you get your news whenever you want it?
It’s one of the big questions behind the rise of social media as a news source as well as in the transformation of journalism from pull to push.
Yesterday I encountered a useful real-world example.
In a meeting at work I mentioned I would follow-up on a task Wednesday, and I was met with a collective giggle. Didn’t I know there was another big snow storm coming Tuesday night? It made for a perfect opportunity to lament my not owning a tv and abstaining from local newscasts. Silly me, for eschewing appointment news!
Except, is that why I didn’t know about the storm?
Not really. I went to bed early the night before, and hadn’t checked my Twitter or RSS feeds when I awoke. My phone’s weather widget wasn’t on. Sure enough, when I returned to my desk and checked, all were abuzz.
The news was delivered to me as soon as I engaged my social networks – off-axis from the typical news appointment of 11pm or 6am. Why would I make an appointment to watch television or read a newspaper when I could get the news when it was convenient for me?
In this instance I looked behind. But, did my co-workers know that Representative Murtha had just passed away? That appeared on my feed midday – but they would wait to make a news appointment to hear about it.
Similarly, I’ve heard about hyper-local news midday – like construction accidents on the next block – when co-workers would have had to search the bowels of a network site for the story. Or, wait for their nightly news appointment.
Maybe it’s funny to hear this from a journalism major, but I reject appointment news – local newscasts with watered-down reporting and over-hyped weather are dead to me. I even reject having to visit a news website to look for relevant stories. I’ve stopped making time in my life for that.
If news is relevant to me it will get filtered to me when it’s relevant.
What about you? Do you consume local news differently than you used to? If there was major breaking news affecting your zip code, where would you hear it first?
What I Tweeted, 2010-02-07 Edition
My tweets of the last week:
Comfort Films
I’ve been watching Star Wars for days.
Lest you wonder, “You mean, instead of going to work?,” allow me to explain: I’m home sick for the second day in the row – a relative rarity for me.
I’ll spare you the details and state simply that I’ve been relatively couchbound for over forty-eight hours, aside from when the constant heavy knocking on doors up and down my block (which I have begun to attribute to daytime drug deals), drove me to sloth up to the bed (there only having to contend with barking dogs).
My non-sleeping couch time has been spent watching Star Wars: A New Hope. Not the ooky remastered version. No. The original, unretouched theatrical cut that comes as a bonus in the box set.
I haven’t made it through it awake a single time, yet.
When I was home sick as a child – as sick as I have been this week – the Beta machine was my only comfort. On it my mother had amassed copies of every possible children’s show or movie shown on VHF, UHF, or HBO from 1981 forward. Muppet Movies, The Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons, Here Comes the Grump, Neverending Story, Dark Crystal, and many more that I can’t remember at the moment.
And Star Wars
Being sick in college wasn’t the same. When you’re sick you just want something you like. You want comfortable clothes, comfort ford, and comfort films. I’ve seen hundreds of movies since then, but none really qualify (save for maybe Lord of the Rings – we did have a tape of The Hobbit, after all).
Having heard my stories of being home sick, E started buying me those movies on my first birthday when we were dating. We’ve continued to fill in the gaps over the years. Having just recently acquired the Star Wars Original Trilogy, all that remains outside of my grasp are the Muppet Movies.
I know this is ridiculous, but I don’t think I would have gotten better so quickly without Star Wars. It kept me couched and calm, intermittently napping – just like it did twenty years ago. Only now in my more mobile state am I interested in modern fare.
Do you have any comfort films?
Take Me To Vegas, Baby!
1. When I first bought the most recent Kings of Leon album – Only By Night – upon its release, the song I immediately gave five stars was “Use Somebody.”
2. In September after two weeks of the NFL season I declared (to no one in particular) that the Superbowl would be between the Saints or the Vikings from the NFC against the Colts or Denver for the AFC.
3. When Blogger.com launched Blogspot I reasoned (and frequently blogged) that Blogger was moving away from its core users that had previously driven word of mouth and feature development to appeal to a wider audience, and that eventually they would phase out the core users entirely. Today Blogger released an email stating that FTP support for domain blogs would end on March 26.