This kind of headline makes me think that we’re living in THE FUTURE!!!, today.
We're so very different, you and I
- The girlfriend: Ha! I last used twitter 8 months ago
- Me: I think I last used it about 8 minutes ago
- Me: 17, actually
Channel 4 News isn’t done yet with its crowdsourcing…
Kickass! Gawker used one of my tips for a story!
See the bit about Channel 4 News in the middle of this article? That tipster is me!
To be absolutely fair to Channel 4 News, it definitely is the best TV news in Britain, by a long, long way. And it is unfortunately having its budget slimmed, resulting in the axing of a couple of its bulletins.
Their Twitter feed is usually pretty good, but they have a tendency to crowd-source. A lot. Probably their worst mistake is to constantly say things like “We have so-and-so on tonight. What should we ask him? Send your Qs to…”.
Hopefully this is just constructive criticism, because C4 News is genuinely a good news show, and they’re making an effort to use new technology as further means of communication.
Ross Noble is my favourite comedian, and thankfully he’s recently discovered Twitter. On stage, the guy’s absolutely manic, never doing the same show twice and constantly flying off on massive tangents and asides before returning to a thread which he was talking about an hour earlier. It’s utter genius, and utterly brilliant.
His Twitter so far is along similar lines, with fewer one-liners and more series of tweets as he runs from one subject into the next. You can really see how he writes something down, and then BANG his brain thinks of something else on a tangent.
If you’ve never heard of Ross Noble, I highly recommend hunting down one of his DVDs or live shows. You’ll laugh your socks off.
I think this TweetStats graph shows quite conclusively that I really struggle to get out of bed before midday on the weekends.
Fucking hell, even Gawker is parroting this Demi Moore/Sarah Brown twitter nonsense now.
Is there seriously such pressure on to get stories published that research just doesn’t happen in modern journalism? I’m at work myself (admittedly on a slow day), but I had time to look up the source of this story and was able to check the facts. It’s really not that fucking difficult.
Sorry, but this genuinely annoys me. It’s not the whole old/new media thing, nor is it about Twitter.
It’s about sheer fucking laziness on the part of journalists who would rather repeat something almost verbatim than bother to go and check the fucking facts them-fucking-selves.
It’s about the rush to get something out there so that people see it, and see the surrounding adverts, rather than making sure that something is true, or accurate. It’s about not wanting to be left behind or usurped by a rival.
It’s about the race to the bottom in terms of journalism, wanting everything faster and cheaper, and the accuracy of the “news” can simply go fuck itself.
And it’s really, really fucking depressing.
Ah, yet another example of old media totally failing to grasp new media, and making a mountain out of a non-existent molehill. The Daily Mail is running a story about how Demi Moore has “snubbed” Sarah Brown (our Prime Minister’s wife) on Twitter by not replying to her.
As it breathlessly reports:
On Tuesday afternoon a series of Tweets popped up on Miss Moore’s page from Mrs Brown’s Twitter account telling the actress to ‘Spread the word (in the U.S.A)!’ that ‘Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn comes out 2day’.
The response from Miss Moore? Very little, apart from a nonplussed silence. In terms of Twitter etiquette, it’s rather like being ignored at a social function.
Issues with this:
a) It wasn’t a “series” of Tweets. It was one.
b) It wasn’t a message directed at Demi Moore. It was a Retweet, with her name in there purely as a form of attribution for the original tweet.
c) In general, Twitter etiquette doesn’t require a reply or thanks for a retweet, although some people do.
The tweet in question is here, and the Daily Mail doesn’t even do the decent thing of linking to it. Old media just doesn’t grasp how linking and attribution helps everybody in every case.
The story is just terrible trash. I was going to use the word “journalism” or “reporting”, but I’d feel quite dirty placing those words so close to this story. Evidently the Mail wants to make fun of Mrs Brown in the same way it relentlessly attacked Cherie Blair, but Mrs Brown isn’t making herself such a public figure.
She’s actually dedicating herself to good causes, and staying under the radar, whereas Cherie was a big-name human rights lawyer who also courted publicity. This strikes me as a very unfair attack, and even moreso for being inept and incorrect.
"Shit My Dad Says" Twitter lands book deal.
Via peterwknox and soupsoup 27 tweets is evidently all it takes to generate a book offer nowadays. Although I should point out that he doesn’t actually have a book deal as yet, just (just!) an agent through which to receive offers. Also, it should be noted that this guy, Justin Halpern, created and wrote for the comedy website Holy Taco, before leaving it earlier this year. He’s not exactly a web newbie, which is the impression being given in this article and the general buzz around the Twitter account. As an aside, I love that the only person this account follows is LeVar Burton.
Reblogged from: peterwknox
Originally posted on: Soup
