Finally time to Twitter
By Rick Nelson, Editor in Chief -- Test & Measurement World, 5/1/2009 2:00:00 AM
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Peruse any source of media these days, and you’ll see or hear something about the perilous position of media in today’s depressed economy and in the face of ever-changing Web tools. Can traditional print newspapers and magazines—like Test & Measurement World and EDN—survive the challenges posed by blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on?
I think the survival question is the wrong question to ask—it posits a competition among various types of media, when in fact the question that should be asked is: How can the different types of media complement each other? We’ve had success with blogs from editors who use them to report news, solicit input, and complement our feature coverage in print or on our Websites.
Of course, Web media evolves rapidly, with blogs having reached late middle age and even the comparatively new Twitter already reaching maturity. The question arises, does a technology like Twitter have anything to offer traditional media companies?
Maureen Dowd at the New York Times doesn’t seem to think so. In the recent column “To Tweet or Not to Tweet,” she recounts asking Twitter cofounder Biz Stone this question: “I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account. Is there anything you can say to change my mind?”
Stone had a ready reply: “Well, when you do find yourself in that position…you might want to type out the message 'Help.’”
Dowd doesn’t say whether this argument wins her over, but we do have on staff one editor who has changed her opinion. That’s Suzanne Deffree, managing editor for news at EDN, who is posting her own tweets at www.twitter.com/EDNmagazine. She says she first checked out Twitter for EDN in early 2008 and “shrugged it off as a fly-by-night waste of time that did little more than share the mundane blips of life.”
She notes, though, that she had also written off e-mail and blogging, and—just as she modified her position on those tools—she has now reconsidered her position on Twitter. She says, “Twitter is far from perfect. But don’t write this tool off as a pre-teen sensation that will be over and done with faster than the next boy band. There’s real value here in making connections, delivering information, and staying informed.” She doesn’t see Twitter as a news reporting mechanism but rather as a way to complement the more traditional reporting that takes place on our Websites, blogs, and print magazines. (Read Suzanne's blog about Twitter.)
So, will Twitter turn out to be a long-term, invaluable tool for traditional media practitioners? Who knows? Maybe, lacking a revenue model, it will quickly fade into obscurity. What we do know is that it’s a well-publicized service that’s available now, and there’s no reason not to add it to our reportorial toolbox.
Check out Suzanne’s tweets. She assures you, “Your time will not be wasted with insignificant blurbs. You will not be overrun with 50 tweets a day. You have better things to do—we get that. Be assured that our Twitter messages will be held to the same high standards we here at EDN hold all of our editorial products to.”
By the way, I’m joining Suzanne on the Twitter bandwagon. Follow me at twitter.com/Rick_editor.
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