Tweet will show that I'm not just a twit
I thought I was being funny, but a member of my staff figured I was just clueless. I sent this note announcing my whereabouts on Thursday morning:
“DuPage Staff ... I will be in Arlington Heights Thursday morning, learning about the wonders of Tweetdeck. I'll send you a Twit when I'm about to return. In the meantime, Bob is in charge.
dhjimdavis”
To which, my staffer replied:
“You mean, a tweet. :-)”
Sigh. The youngsters just don't get me.
The occasion for this high-level meeting was for all of us editor types to learn about Tweetdeck, basically a means to monitor Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.
I was told beforehand that we'd all need a Twitter account before our training session, so I signed up. Pretty easy. And within seconds, it seemed, I had my first follower. But her Twitter name honestly frightened me, implying that she wanted me to stalk her. (“How do I explain this to my wife?” I asked my lab partner at the training session. “Tell her you're an important media star,” he said, “and these things are just part of the job.”)
I also thought it would be wise to find some well-known twits, I mean, tweeters, to follow. My first choice was Kim Kardashian, because I heard she had more followers than anyone in the world. Wrong again, Luddite. It's Lady Gaga, followed by Justin Bieber. Lady Kim is only sixth, also behind Britney Spears, President Obama and Ashton Kutcher.
Added a few more celebrities. Did you know “Weird” Al Yankovic has a book that‘s debuting at No. 4 on The New York Times best seller list? That Guy Fieri suggests everyone tune in to the next episode of “Minute to Win It” because it's gonna be really cool? Honestly, I'm thinking about dropping Guy, even though “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” is my favorite TV show; “Minute” is among the worst.
Someone opined, I think during the Jay Cutler was-he-sufficiently-hurt-to-stand-on-the-sidelines controversy, that the world was becoming a scary place with all these celebrities having a forum from which to pop off. Or to be deathly boring. May I suggest that Kim Kardashian's tweets are not that spellbinding?
Of course, there is a method to this madness, even for something as staid as newspapers. Everyone knows print subscriptions are down everywhere, but newspaper readership is up, when you add up all the online hits. Heck, we've never been better read. A recent audit showed that the Daily Herald's combined print and online readership grew from 822,180 to 902,958 between fall of 2009 and 2010, an increase of almost 10 percent. That's the fourth-highest growth among newspapers in the nation.
But there's more to this Internet business than putting up a website and hoping everyone will come. The social networking sites are growing in leaps and bounds, becoming the premiere way, especially among younger people, to communicate. So much so that even e-mail may become obsolete someday. (Now, the curmudgeonly old guy in me says, “If that's true, why do 50 e-mails land in my inbox during a quick visit to the restroom?)
But, hey, we're in the communication business. Getting the word out to as many people as possible is what we've been doing for eons. It's just that the platforms, as they say, are rapidly changing.
Jim Slusher, our editorial page editor, puts it well.
“Social media isn't just a fad. It's the way people communicate en masse these days and the way they're going to communicate en masse in the future,” he said (via e-mail, ha-ha). “More and more, people are sharing that information through Facebook, Twitter and the like, so it's only natural that we get into that stream.”
And, Slusher notes, newspapers play an important role.
“Our most important characteristic is reliability. People know the standards we have for trying to be objective and for trying to verify what we report.”
So, with those lofty goals in mind, I share with you, gentle reader, my first official tweet.
“On this occasion, my 59th birthday, I wish to announce my plans to be a more active social networker through this. my first twit. dhjimdavis.”
Ÿ jdavis@dailyherald.com