It's coming - Mobile as the seventh mass media

A healthy portion of ink, airtime and web electrons were expended by the news media during the last week on the subject of Barack Obama's Blackberry.

Would he be able to keep it? He certainly wanted to and said so publicly. The Secret Service, it was reported, worried about security (as it should) and made no bones about the fact that he would have to give it up. Finally, negotiations produced an agreement that allowed him to hang on to it.

Most of the news coverage treated the whole as interesting but somewhat trivial.

• Obama Digs In for His BlackBerry, The New York Times, January 7, 2009
• Obama Keeps His Blackberry in a Hard-Fought E-Victory The New York Times, January 25, 2009

One story in the Times referred to Obama's Blackberry "addiction," but the use of that word -- even playful as it was -- betrays an attitude about mobile communication that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding.

Mobile communication is an important, fast-growing phenomenon. It most definitely is NOT trivial.

My friend Chuck Warnock (Confessions of a Small Church Pastor and pictured at right) has been after me for several weeks to pay attention to the mobile phenomenon. Chuck pastors a church in central Virginia and is carving out a niche for himself as a guru of the future of small churches. He made his points convincingly this weekend when he came to visit and we had a couple of long conversations about it. (Chuck is also the lead partner with me in SmallChurchPROF.)

Mobile communications, he says, is the next big thing. We don't recognize that in America because our devices are so far behind those of most of the rest of the world.

Chuck directed me toward Tomi Ahonen, one of the chief writers and thinkers about mobile technology, its use and implications. Ahonen, a marketing consultant, has written several books, one of which is titled Mobile as the 7th Mass Media. (You can read or download an excerpt of the book at this site.) The first six are

• print
• sound recording
• cinema
• radio
• television
• internet

While the internet has had a huge impact on our lives during the past 15 years of its existence, Ahonen argues that mobile will have much more impact and it will be much fast. He marshals some impressive statistics to back up his argument.

• As of October 2007, there were 6.6 billion people in the world and 3.3 billion cell phones.
  
  
• 90 percent of those who own a cell phone keep it at arm's length, and more than 60 percent of owners take it to bed with them. For many, it is the last thing they look at before falling asleep and it acts as an alarm clock to wake them up -- and it is the first thing they look at when they do.
  
  
• Until only recently, Americans has not understood the cell phone phenomenon because our technology has been so far behind much of the rest of the world. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 changed that and showed us the possibilities.

Ahonen believes the introduction of the iPhone will be a key date in the history of technology because it will be the time when American creativity was awakened to the possibilities of the cell phone as an all-purpose communication and community-building device.

This is fascinating stuff -- and a little scary.

Personally, I'm a Luddite when it comes to cell phones. I can barely remember to take my cell phone with me when I go out of the house, and as I write this, it's downstairs and I'm upstairs (not in arm's length). I do not have a Blackberry but suspect that an iPhone will be in my future before too very long. It isn't in my hands yet, however.

Still, every high school and college student has a cell and is an expert in sending and receiving text messages. Like many other adults, I have denigrated this behavior as a waste of time and technology (which, undoubtedly, much of it is). But then, lots of people (including me) have denigrated Facebook and Twitter (follow me here), both of which I am sold on.

What are the implications for journalism and journalism technology of the coming Age of Mobile?

Plenty. I just don't know what they are yet, but Chuck has convinced me to get my head out of my MacBook computer screen and start looking around. There will surely be lots to see.

I'm glad our president is keeping his Blackberry. He'll need it.

So, apparently, will we.

Congratulations, President Barack Obama

A remarkable feat by a remarkable man who will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009.

An author and college professor, he is now at the pinnacle of political power.

We join with the world in wishing him well.

And congratulations to the United States of America.

ICONN: First take on the final day

The prevailing feeling I absorbed from the second day of the founders conference of the Intercollegiate Online News Network (ICONN) was this:

A good time was had by all.

We see a bright, innovative, exciting time for us (educators, professionals, students) and for our avocation (journalism). We look forward to an age of creativity and innovation. We see golden opportunities for our students to do good work, write and tell good stories, and make a difference for their readers and our society.

We are energized by meeting like-minded people who offer thoughts, ideas and plans on the things we are interested in.

During every session and every break, walk and van ride, there were dozens of lively conversations and exchanges. The tweets and blog posts flowed like a rushing stream (many of which you can find with an #ICONN search of Twitter or in some of the links below).

What a contrast from the dreary and dreaded staff conferences and faculty meetings where people struggle to defend their turf and fear the future. Economic realities and the threats of change are real, but the ICONN group in Knoxville (and many of their like-minded colleagues following the goings-on from afar) know that the future will be unlike much of what we have seen in the past.

And we're ready to take it on.

Below are some links where you can pick up a sense of what the conference was about.

During the weekend, I will be going through the audio that I recorded from various sessions and posting some clips from it. Participants should email me any reactions they have posted that I may have missed, and you are, of course, welcome to comment on any of this.


Links

ICONN and the future
UMass Journalism Professors Blog: Steve Fox: "It’s the second conference I’ve been to during the winter break — the other was at Western New England College where I was also asked to speak about the future of journalism. The mood at the two conferences could not be more different."

Live Blogging: Journalism conference as a participant observer
My Tennessee Home: Lisa Gary: "Collaborative connectivity was the theme behind the scenes, too. As panels discussed and students listened and took notes, participants from many universities used wireless connections to report from the scene."

Journalism Education Finds Its Iconn
instrumentlanding.com: Jay Baird: "The newsroom is broken. People on ferries taking pictures of airplanes in rivers are the new gatekeepers. How do we teach journalism students to collate, disseminate and guide media consumers through all of this? I think that the new model will be found on Rocky Top."

Photos

Photos by Ben Moser, TNJN.com. More of these at Flickr. From the top:

Photo 1: Jason Georges and Jeff Long (KPCC - Southern California) and the joys of the iPhone.

Photo 2: Tammi Marcoullier of Publish2 makes a point.

Photo 3: George Daniels of Alabama does the Twitter thing.

Photo 4: Bob Benz (Radiant Markets), Steve Klein (George Mason U.), and Steve Fox (UMass - Amherst) exchange some ideas.

ICONN conference, Day 2 - pictures of session 3

The first session of the morning of the second day of the Intercollegiate Online News Network is underway. Above are some pictures.

The people on the panel are

9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
Professional affiliates

• Tammi Marcoullier, Publish2
• Bob Benz, Radiant Markets
• Michael Marshall, UPI
• Jay Baird, Mochi Media
• Peter Gross, director, School of Journalism and Electronic Media, presiding

ICONN conference, Day 1 - pictures and links

Listen to an audio file of the first session. (Unedited, 57:30)

The first day of the Intercollegiate Online News Network founders conference at the University of Tennessee saw a journalism academics, students and professionals come together to discuss ways to better integrate online journalism into journalism curricula.

Above are pictures from the first day's sessions.

Some people are twittering about the conference with the hashtag #ICONN.

And here are some blog posts about the conference.

• Jim Miller's Menial Musings: Thoughts from the Intercollegiate Online News conference
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): More pictures from Day 1
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): UPI reinvents itself with new generation of students online
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): UT Knoxville students turn out for ICONN
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): ICONN begins with faculty-student exchanges
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): A three-day trip to the Volunteer State begins
  
  
• JEM222 blog: ICONN conference discussions how journalism classes relate to work field

Clear and cold -- 10 degrees -- in Knoxville early this morning.

More on the conference later.

Writing for Twitter - good journalism in 140 characters

When a dam that held millions of cubic yards of toxic coalash near Harriman, Tenn., broke a few days before Christmas 2008, no one paid much attention other than those immediately affected by it and the local media. The disaster was epic -- compared to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.

But it was Christmas and the country was in the throes of an economic crisis and the transition of a new president. And no one was killed.

But a few people were paying attention, and that made a difference. Amy Gahran, an independent media consultant in Boulder, Colo., and editor of the group blog E-Media Tidbits for Poynter.org, wondered what was going on. She's also a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Two days after the disaster, she wrote this for Poynter:

When I first learned of this disaster from SEJ colleagues by e-mail this morning (, I immediately launched the Twitter hashtag #coalash. Off and on today I've been posting links to news, context, background, opinion, resources, maps, and multimedia related to this unfolding story. Even EPA's Web manager, Jeffrey Levine, was tweeting relevant EPA maps and facility info.

Other Twitter users, including several Tenn.-area news orgs, adopted the hashtag. This made it easier for people to find and follow their coverage. Using a hashtag provides a broader view that includes local news coverage and extends beyond it. At the same time, a hashtag can amplify the reach of local stories. Online, this reach becomes especially crucial in the absence of delayed or absent mainstream national news coverage.

Once the buzz started on Twitter -- and came together through Gahran's hashtag -- news media from outside the East Tennessee area began paying attention and the story began to garner the international attention it deserved.

This story, and many others like it, amply demonstrate the power of Twitter as a journalistic device.

Once thought to be nothing more than an interpersonal communications trivial pursuit, Twitter has become an important information tool that can help journalists gather information and can also provide a means of distributing journalism to an interested audience.


What is Twitter

Twitter is a way an individual can connect with people who share the same interests and inclinations. An individual registers for an account on Twitter.com and selects a username. The individual can provide other information for a profile, but this is optional. The key thing is that the individual begins to contribute what, in Twitterland, are called "tweets."

In addition to the tweets, the individual can also begin to "follow" other users of Twitter; that is, the person finds other persons and begins to get a list of their tweets on his or her Twitter page.

As an individual contributes more tweets, he or she will attract "followers." These can start with friends and family, but if the tweets are at all interesting, follwers will show up whom the individual does not know.

This is just the beginning. There are many other aspects to Twitter, many of them outlined in this excellent article by Ellyn Angelotti.

But the big factor in Twitter is brevity. You have only 140 characters (letters, punctuation and spaces) to say what you have to say. That's usually between 10 and 15 words.


Writing a Tweet

Once you are on Twitter and are following a few people, read a page or two of tweets. You will get a sense of what is there and how people use it. You will be attracted, repelled, fascinated, confused -- and possibly even appalled. Remember that when you write a tweet, the people following you may have those same reactions, so begin deciding right away what kind of personality you want to form.

As a journalist writing for Twitter, you are trying to inform the people who are following you. But, remember too that as one of twitters, you are part of an ongoing conversation, and you should feel free to react to what others have said as well as introducing original information into the conversation.

Here are some things to think about and some guidelines:

• What's the point? Why are you posting? Have a goal in mind. Understand how you want people to feel when they have read you post.
  
  
• Information is more important, and interesting, than opinion.
  
  
• One or two points (of information, opinion, whatever) max. Not three. You'll quickly use up your space.
  
  
• Think: subjects and verbs. Complete sentences are not always necessary, but complete thoughts are.
  
  
• Emphasize verbs. Active, descriptive verbs. It's one of the basic truths of good writing.
  
  
• As in headline writing, "to be" verbs can be understood rather than written.
  
  
• Drop articles (a, an and the) unless they are necessary for clarity.
  
  
• Punctuate for clarity, not necessarily just to follow the rules.
  
  
• Same thing goes for AP style. Often AP style rules will help with brevity, but sometimes they don't.
  
  
• Use abbreviations only if you are sure your audience will immediately understand them. Don't use them just to show that you're hip to techno lingo.
  
  
• Don't be afraid to direct your tweets to individual users. Done correctly, this can help build your audience.
  
  
• Maintain a sense of professionalism. Using profanity and scatological language may give you a sense of coolness about yourself, but it's also likely to lose you followers. (On the day I wrote this, I stopped following an acquaintance for just this reason.)
  
  
• Ask and ye shall receive. One of the great things about Twitter (and the web in general) is that there are people ready to respond, particularly if what you want is reasonable and interesting. A well-formed question will attract responses and followers.
  
  
• Respect. Respect the language, your audience and yourself. Honesty, courtesy, modesty and civility are values in the Twitter society. Strive for them.
  

These are guidelines, not rules. They are mean to help you get started, not to lock you into a certain style or convention. Once you are on Twitter and a participant in the conversation, you can decide who you want to be and how you can use Twitter to be effective.


Continue reading:

Amy Gahran: Twitter Basics for Journalists & Recovering Journos
Step-by-step -- getting onto Twitter and making the most of it, from a major league Twitterer.

Terrance Ward: Using Hashtags for Organization in Twitter: Options for Making Microblogging Posts Ready for Viral Retweeting | January 5, 2009 | A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the pound sign (#). Twitter, the pioneer microblogging service, saw its visitors quintuple in 2008. With so many more posts (or “tweets,” as they’re called on the site) being made, users are developing ways to organize and track the information meaningfully.

Craig Stoltz: How Twitter Finally Taught Me to be an Editor | Web2.0h...Really? | May 27, 2008 Fact is, it’s tough to convey any substance in 140 characters. You have to carefully weigh every word, letter and space. Even punctuation.

Margarent Mason: Writing My Twitter Etiquette Article: 14 Ways to Use Twitter Politely | The Morning News | August 15, 2008 Some good thoughts about how to use Twitter appropriately by Margaret Mason.

Ellyn Angelotti: JournoTweeting | Poynter Institute | This excellent article by Ellyn Angelotti takes you through Twitter step by step and then tells you how a journalist should be using it. Lots of links and good advice