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Posts Tagged ‘John Dickerson’

Old Media’s Foray Into New Media: A Cautionary Tale

September 15th, 2008 by AV Flox in Twitter, citizen journo

Last week Tuesday The Rocky Mountain News created a stir in the blogosphere after one of their journalists used text messaging to report the funeral of the toddler that was killed when an SUV flew through the window of a Colorado Baskin Robbins.

The story exploded nationally when it was reported that the man responsible for the accident was an illegal immigrant who’d not only never had a license, but had a lengthy rap sheet, including 20 previous arrests.

Following the funeral of the boy, the attention shifted to the media. Berny Morson, a journo for The Rocky Mountain News, used the micro-blogging platform Twitter to take notes at the young boy’s funeral using his cell phone.

Live-tweeting—that is, reporting live using Twitter—is very common. From the Democratic and Republican National Conventions to the season premier of the CW show Gossip Girl, everyone’s doing it.

John Dickerson, who covers the presidential campaign for Slate, told The Washington Post, “If I have a thought that occurs to me, I’ll fire it off. Sometimes it ends up being the lead of a piece, or the notion a piece gets framed around.”

It’s probably not the first time someone has live-tweeted a funeral (heaven knows everything from being fired to giving birth has been live-tweeted since Twitter went live in 2006), but to my knowledge, this is the first time that a newspaper has run the unedited stream of live-tweets from a funeral as a sidebar on a major story.

Cara Degette at The Colorado Independent called it, “utterly, and unforgivingly, inconceivable.”

I asked Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU who’s very active on Twitter, what he thought.

“My opinion is that you need to separate the method—Twittering from a funeral—from the execution; were these the right Tweets?” Rosen responded via an e-mail. “I don’t see anything wrong with the method. The content can be criticized.”

When asked how he would criticize the tweets, the former department chair said he didn’t know the community served by The Rocky Mountain News well enough to offer useful comments.

“Can someone explain the news value of this tweet stream for Rocky Mountain News readers?” Michelle Ferrier asked on the Poynter Institute E-Media Tidbits blog. “I think the glitz of technology has taken over common sense.”

“I think there is a mania to use new technology no matter what and they aren’t thinking,” said John Windrow, night city editor at The Honolulu Advertiser. “It gives newsmen a bad name.”

Samuel Freedman, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and author of Letters to a Young Journalist, offered some more insight.

“I think that reporters are often in the uncomfortable position of reporting from settings where people are in great grief,” Freedman told ABCNews.com. “These situations call for the greatest understanding and discretion on the part of the reporter. To be putting real-time notes out there as opposed to waiting until the ceremony is over; there’s an element of pillaging a private moment of grief that I’m uncomfortable with. A memorial service for a murdered—for a slain child—is not a fit subject for play-by-play updates.”

David J. Zucker, the rabbi who officiated at the service, told ABC News that he didn’t think there was anything offensive in Morson’s live-tweeting.

“The way I see it is that it’s somebody sharing to a wider community interested and felt connected to this sad event.”

In the midst of the hullabaloo, John Temple, editor at The Rocky Mountain News went on the record to clarify matters:

As is our custom, we asked the parents of Marten Kudlis whether we could cover his funeral. To be clear: We never enter funeral services to report on them without the family’s permission. Period.

… Most of us couldn’t attend the service. But that doesn’t mean we don’t empathize with the family and don’t want to join in their mourning in some way. Marten was one family’s son before he died. But because of the way he died, his loss was felt by thousands.

One way for a news organization to help a community connect is to send information live from the service, just as we do from events ranging from political conventions to road closings to concerts and parties. We don’t have to wait to publish in the next day’s paper anymore. TV and radio don’t wait, and people seem to value that.

I can imagine some might think live updates during a solemn event might be disruptive. But typically reporters can sit at the very back of a hall, out of the way of mourners.

Ultimately, to me, it’s all about execution. Poorly done, such journalism might very well feel inappropriate. Done well, I don’t think so.

Some criticism of the short blasts our reporter sent may be justified. They can seem cold, even crass. But I am responsible for that failing. It is my job to make sure our staff is trained properly.

Think of such live reporting as someone whispering into a phone directly to a global audience. There is no room for editors. What the reporter writes is what you read almost instantly. That requires special skill. It takes practice.

But to claim there is something inherently wrong with the idea is to make too sweeping a judgment. Everything from services for major public figures like presidents and popes to ceremonies for victims of tragedies like the one at Columbine High School have long been covered by TV and radio.

… We must learn to use the new tools at our disposal. Yes, there are going to be times we make mistakes, just as we do in our newspaper.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try something. It means we need to learn to do it well. That is our mission.

Shortly after composing this piece, I shot Twitter co-founder Evan Williams a DM asking his take. He replied with the following comment:

The concept does seem odd–coming to you “live” from… a funeral. And coming to you live via Twitter probably seems uncomfortable for at least a couple more reasons:

1) As opposed to newspapers, Twitter is in general not perceived as being very serious. Therefore, perhaps reporting a funeral via Twitter make it seem like it’s not being taken seriously.

2) While a reporter covering the funeral is probably taking notes anyway, sending text messages sounds disrespectful and like he/she is not really paying attention. (In reality he/she is probably paying more attention, in order to report.)

I didn’t read the tweets from the event, so I don’t know if any were inappropriate. But as far as whether the idea itself is flawed, I’d have to agree with John Temple: If the family was okay having the event reported on in general, it being covered while it was still happening shouldn’t be that much different. In these types of matters, though, people’s initial reaction may be more important than the logical argument. I do not blame the reporter (or newspaper) for not predicting people would react that way.

My prediction would be that in the future this type of thing does not seem odd, though. Live video coverage will probably also be common (not that we haven’t seen live video of funerals already).

What do you think—did The Rocky Mountain News go too far?

What’s Twitter? Read my piece about the microblogging platform here.

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