You’ve got mail! And a Tweet…and a wallpost, a blog, a LinkedIn invite, and a video recommended by ESPN. Although the newspaper industry is slowly washing away, the social media whisper is turning into an uproar. Has the downfall of Metropolitan Dailies resulted in the rise of social media’s revolution? Or did the advent of social media push newspaper columnists out the door? Either way, I believe the future of news dissemination won’t be at your doorstep every morning, but rather, online 24/7…a truly discomforting notion.
For sports fans, the future of media coverage is going to come from Twitter updates, RSS feeds, blogs, and citizen journalism. Most people agree with me regarding the citizen journalism covering teams better on blogs and podcasts, but my question is, Who’s going to get the quotes from the official people?
For instance, Rickie Weeks of my beloved Brewers hits a game winning homerun in the bottom of the ninth to beat the St. Louis Cardinals. I can wax poetic about the dramatics of the game for 6000 words, but I’ll never have a direct quote about the game unless Tom Haudricourt or Anthony Witrado from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel releases the info on their blog or in an official article the next day. I’m all for personal stances and subjective reporting styles, but I’m also a big fan of REAL information.
I recently attended a community forum for AnnArbor.com, the new website (kinda...sorta...but not really) taking over for the Ann Arbor News in July. It was fascinating to hear Tony Dearing and his colleagues discuss the new venture. I like the way AnnArbor.com is going about this for a few reasons:
1) They are ambitious in their goals to be a leader in the field of moving the newspaper to the internet. They know the "newspaper of tomorrow" will look very different from today and they are attempting to find out how to make their website look like the ideal news source.
2) They are working tirelessly in trying to attend to all the concerns the public has concerning the loss of the daily and launch of the 24/7 website news source. This was their third forum with (I think) one more on the way. Each forum brings more detail and (slightly) more answers to the public.
3) They want AnnArbor.com to be perfect as soon as possible, but they are not too pretentious to think the first version WILL be the end all, be all of internet newspapers. Numerous times, Mr. Dearing said this site would evolve as the technology evolves and the kinks get figured out.
As newspaper move onto the internet, I think its important to mantain a high level of skill and citation. Journalism is an art and I would hate to see the finer points of the written word disappear for the sake of "getting the scoop". Please media gods, grant me this wish.
Talk to you later Pointees.
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