Health Journalists on Twitter: Not Entirely Well, Thank You

I’m going to be hosting a webinar on how health journalists use social media soon.

So I thought I’d check out the health reporters on Muckrack.com, a website that aggregates Tweets of our nation’s journalistic corps.

It can be fascinating to see what sort of brain-lint the media produce minute-by-minute on the world’s tiniest news platform.

As I began writing this entry, for instance, there were dozens of Tweets not so much reporting, but wondering aloud what was up with, the “fact” that Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to be resigning, or at least not running for re-election, or something.

It was an enlightening moment in journalistic pop anthropology. You could see the complex thoughts of inside-the-Beltway sophisticates taking shape right before your  eyes.

Tweeted Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post: “Something must be up, I guess. Kind of weird.“

Talk about your first rough draft of history.

The Health Journalist Twitterers

But anyway, I was there to check out the Health niche. The health reporting corps has not for the most part discovered Muckrack yet: Only 10 health reporters’ Tweetstreams were aggregated on the Muckrack’s Health page.

They comprised three Baltimore Sun reporters, two from the Chicago Tribune, and one from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. [All Tribune Co. properties]. Then there is one each from CNBC, CBS News, the Montreal Gazette, and the New York Times.

And how were they using social media? The mixed bag you might expect.

Journalists on Twitter: Seeking Sources, Thinking Out Loud, Promoting Self, Getting Personal

Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune, for instance, used Twitter to conduct some of source-fishing, cogitate about topics in her notebook, promote her own articles and, like all public-spirited Tweeters, reveal some personal information.

In Deardorff’s case, at least, the personal was professional.

• On Thursday June 25 she reported that she “injured my intercostal muscles by coughing for a week straight.”
• Two days later she reported she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
• And two days later she was back on the beat, trolling for sources to discuss the Nuval nutrition rating system.

Best-of-Class: Mike Huckman of CNBC

The most prolific health Twitterer on Muckrack–and, with over 3,000 followers, the most watched–is Mike Huckman, the pharma reporter for CNBC. Anybody interested in the bloodsport in the drug trade should follow Huckman’s sluice of reports, rulings, research and rumors about the companies that make America’s meds.

There is also insight into the life of a business journalist, such as this ripe observation about dealing with flacks. [Note the #prfail hashtag]:

mhuckman #prfail Just got call from PR person.I pick up phone,as always,”This is Mike.”They say,”Mike Huffman?”Pitching pvte co anyway,so 0 interest
a day ago by Mike Huckman, Pharmaceuticals Reporter, CNBC

Doctor!!!! Doctor!!!!!

CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton Tweets about her comings and goings conducting interviews. Fairly routine stuff for journalistic Tweetle.

But for someone who is both a journalist and an M.D., she can be unusually enthusiastic. Within the stretch of 5 Tweets she managed to use 10 exclamation points. That may be a record of some sort.

New York Times and Twitter: Not a Healthy Situation

The smart set says that it’s poor form to use Twitter simply as a “push” device, as a tool to inflict yourself on the world. Everybody who participates in Twitter [it is said], even journalists, should expect to give more than they take, share tidbits with people who may appreciate them, develop relationships, etc. This is the spirit of the social web, it is said.

The biggest violator of this principle among the health reporting set on Muckrack is the estimable Tara Parker Pope, author of the New York Times’ Well health blog.

Her Tweetery consists almost entirely of two things: Links to her own blog entries and acolytic admirations of the fine work of her fellow Timesfolk. [i.e., "Interesting slide show on NyTimes Lens blog of homeless transgendered teens. http://bit.ly/14POwF"]

It’s true that Pope also gets personal; she Tweets about her preparation for the New York City Marathon.

taraparkerpope My 5.4 mi run tonight spent 630 calories according to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com . But now I’m 800 calories worth of hungry.
Tara Parker Pope, Well Columnist, New York Times

But that’s professional self-promotion too: Pope is the proprietor of RunWell, an online community for distance runners the Times launched recently.

Clearly Pope hasn’t gotten the Tweet about social media ethos. Another Twitter profile bears Pope’s name and likeness. nytimeswell is nothing but a botstream that’s triggered every time her blog updates.

Actually it’s triggered more often than that. Check out the series of simuTweets on celiac disease.

I found it peculiar that the New York Times was using Twitter is such a graceless manner compared to its peers.

The Times, after all, recently hired Jen Preston as its first Social Media Editor. Her task, presumably, would be to help staff make enlightened use of social web tools like Twitter.

So I clicked over to Preston’s feed in Muckrack to see how she is faring.

Not all that well, it turns out.

The Times’ social media doyenne hadn’t updated in about 3 weeks, and only three times since this one:

Working on response to 1,000 replies to last week’s question, how can @nytimes better use Twitter. MediaBistro conference later.
12:15 PM Jun 3rd from web

NVision, the Future of Journalism, and Social Media

I’m delighted to report that I’ll be hosting a panel today at NVision 2009, a gathering of journalism editors, reporters, business leaders at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Our panel is about — stop me if you’ve heard this before — social media. Panelists include Patrick Cooper of USA Today, Etan Horowitz of the Orlando Sentinel, Scott Karp of Publish2 and Jennifer Golbeck, a professor [computer science!] at the University of Maryland.

I’ll do a wrap-up post, including the slides and best-of Tweets. The hashtag is #nvision. In fact, Etan is Twittering as I write. I better get downtown quick.

Update, 1:07 p.m.: I’m here, and have discovered the event is live-streaming. Our panel’s on at 3:45 p.m. EST.

Update, 9:28 p.m.: Great panel.  Of course, I have to say that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not serious. These folks were great.

Read the NVision Twitter stream:

Here’s a writeup of the NVision social media panel by Mary Ellen Slater, my former Washington Post colleague and now editor of SmartBrief on Social Media. [Note: SmartBrief on Social Media is a daily e-mail newsletter that does an excellent job of vetting and summarizing social media news. Between that one e-mail newsletter and Twitter, I don't need an RSS feed for social media any more.]

Here is the slideshow, cheerfully entitled “Everybody’s Talking, No One Cares About You, and Nobody Can Hear You Scream”.

Here are my takeaways from our panel. [These should not be trusted, since I was at the podium keeping an eye on the watch, containing the unruly crowd, etc. and so couldn't take notes.]

Patrick Cooper: USA Today actually has a strategy for using social media, and it seems to be working. [Italics of surprise mine]. It’s collaborating with marketing folks to figure out what vertical niches around which the news organization can build social content. [Check out its Cruise Log, a lively microsite mashup of journalism and reader-generated content on taking cruises.]

Etan Horowitz: The key to success with social media is low expections. Use it, join in, find out what’s valuable…but don’t expect some dramatic payoff.

Scott Karp: By using social media tools to collaborate rather than compete, journalists can produce more high-quality stuff than they can working in silos–especially at a time when fewer people are working in fewer silos. See Publish2, especially if you’re a journalist.

Jen Golbeck: Using Facebook, people can filter their own news based on who they know and trust, a fact which is having all sorts of consequences for the media, users and society. One of these is the mass disappearance of cows in Texas. [You had to be there. But go here anyway.]

These four kept the crowd in their seats for the last panel of the day. Afterward, people hung around so long asking questions that the Newseum people had to kick us out.

And I came away thinking that, maybe, a few journalists and publishers in the audience will wind up diving into the world of social media, or diving in deeper.

I take no responsibility for the consequences.

The Newspaper Revitalization/Beetle Bailey Protection Act

Dear Sen. Benjamin Cardin,

As a Maryland resident, long-time journalist and a citizen with a keen interest in the economy, I’d like to offer my opinion on the bill you introduced yesterday, The Newspaper Revitalization Act:

During a period of monumentally feeble-minded legislative lunging, this bill earns a place right alongside that nutjob 90 percent tax on AIG bonuses your good friends in the House voted for recently. In fact, it has eerie similarities.

Your Newspaper Revitalization Act:

• uses the U.S. tax code to express emotion rather than solve a problem;
• reflects a poor understanding of the industry it will affect;
• could trigger a series of events that threatens our collective future; and
• won’t make it past the first constitutional lawyer who gets her hands on it.

Far worse, unlike the AIG bill, the Act threatens to sustain publication of Beetle Bailey cartoons in perpetuity. More on that below.

Let’s start thinking through some of the issues surrounding the The Newspaper Revitalization Act [hereafter, "NRA"][!], which allows local newspapers [but not big newspaper chains, Senator, you sly populist!] to declare non-profit status as 501(c)3 organizations devoted to public education.

[Insert the sound of knuckles cracking here.]

It provides advantages for newspapers, not news organizations.

Like the AIG bonuses themselves, the NRA rewards the very people who got us into this mess in the first place, which in this case means the retrograde, hidebound lamebrains–excuse me, “public-minded community business leaders”–who have been thwarting innovation in the news industry for the past decade as their world has collapsed around them. By providing tax advantages to a declining business, this isn’t just “picking winners and losers.” It’s making the losers winners.

It punishes innovation

So: An entrepreneur who has invested in new technology, is moving the industry forward and training a workforce for the 21st century will face unfair price competition from the folks who continue to cling to a dying business model and distribute news on forest products.

This is like granting tax advantage to steam-powered automobile makers when the gasoline engine threatened to put them out of business. [I wonder if we'd have a steam-powered auto industry today if the Steam Powered Automobile Revitalization Act had been passed in 1920.]

It rewards small newspapers over bigger ones.

Since “large newspaper conglomerates” [from your press release, Senator] would not be covered under this bill, the newspapers of diversified media companies would be at a competitive disadvantage in local markets, since their revenues won’t be shielded from taxes and their pricing must account for some profit margin.

The result may well be the survival of small, non-profit newspapers and the speedier decline of larger newspaper companies. Hello, Moline Weekly Journal-Register-World, goodbye Gannet local paper! Is this outcome in the public interest? Beats me.

The bill is silent on the, how we say, “nettlesome” issue of online news distribution by tax-advantaged non-profits.

Under the bill, can a non-profit newspaper publish its content online? If so, is its digital revenue tax-protected? Can the paper sell content created under tax shield to big, for-profit online media companies? Can these non-profit newspaper organizations make their content available for online-first distribution? If not, would holding news back until it’s been dropped off by truck at the local drug store be in the public interest?

Let’s get us some lawyers and dig into this stuff!

Non-profits can be fat, rich and plutocratic, just like for-profits.

It’s sweet to think of non-profits as humble organizations with hard-working people devoted to the public good. Some are. But take a look at non-profits like United Way, the Red Cross and AARP–great buildings, comfortable salaries, cool technology, folks who come in once a week to polish the shiny surfaces in the lobby, etc.  The major difference: what private companies call “profit,” 501(c)3’s must invest [most of] every year to keep advancing their mission.

And while we’re on the topic of non-profit plutocracy, how long before someone realizes that hey, if I can lash together a group of local, non-profit newspapers under the umbrella of a bigger national non-profit, that’d be a sweet business–I mean, public service organization. [Look at that, someone just thought of that already!]

The new non-profits will be permitted to receive tax-advantaged donations from companies and private individuals.

Yes, NPR, PBS and their affiliates take donations from benefactors. But in a local market, let’s say the area chamber of commerce and its leaders, donating as individuals, pony up 20 percent of the newspaper’s annual budget with generous contributions, hoping to support “fair and balanced” coverage of the local business issues.

[Moment of silent reflection here.]

The problem of definitions

The bill defines a newspaper that may convert to non-profit status in this way:

(1) the trade or business of such corporation or organization consists of publishing on a regular
basis a newspaper for general circulation,

(2) the newspaper published by such corporation or organization contains local, national, and
international news stories of interest to the general public and the distribution of such newspaper is necessary or valuable in achieving an educational purpose, and

(3) the preparation of the material contained in such newspaper follows methods generally considered educational in nature.

All right, let’s just drive the ol’ Ford 150 through some of the bigger holes:

• Does the newspaper have to include local, national and international news stories? Two of the three? Any one?
• Who will determine what’s “of interest to the general public”? And what sort of accountability would there be?
• And do you really mean that the preparation follows methods considered educational? i.e., that the process of newsgathering must be done via a method considered educational? I don’t get that one at all. Did someone proofread this thing?

The Beetle Bailey Educational Conundrum

Let’s talk education.

Will such non-profit newspapers be allowed to run stuff like Beetle Bailey as part of their “educational” mission? Crossword puzzles? Feature stories on cute cats? Hollywood gossip? A publication devoted to pro-choice issues? Pro-life? How about a newspaper about the issues and personalities of the local transgendered population? Computer gamers?

Or would the newspaper to achieve educational goals have to run nothing but “hard news” and “investigative reporting” or “public service journalism,” however you want to identify that? And if so, who would choose to read it? And if nobody reads it, how could even these publications survive, even as non-profits?

++++++++++++++

Senator, I share your concern that the publication of news from a variety of independent sources is essential to a vital democracy.

But government bailout is not the answer. I endorse what your esteemed colleagues across the aisle call “a free market approach.”

The way to ensure survival and growth of news–of journalism–is to let the free market take its course.

Let the newspapers die so that the next generation of news operations can grow and thrive.

Think of the death of newspapers as a down payment on building a competitive, dynamic, democratic future with an informed citizenry and accountable public officials.

And freedom, forever, from Sargent Snorkel.

Sincerely,

Craig Stoltz

7 Reasons Tina Brown is Spanking Arianna Huffington’s Butt

About six months into the adventure, Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast news-and-comment website is already far superior to Arianna Huffington’s fantastically popular supra-blog Huffington Post. Why, you ask?

1. The Daily Beast delivers less content than HuffPo. Web users need people smart enough to tell us what to ignore. These people are called “editors.”

2. DB views the world with a cocked eyebrow. HuffPo is wide-eyed. Skeptics are more interesting to spend time with than believers.

3. When you’re hungry, DB is a funky buffet line. HuffPo is a food bank.

4. DB understands that politics exists within pop culture. HuffPo thinks pop culture is the sideshow to politics.

5. DB, despite its proprietor’s print heritage, understands that web users scan, dip and click. HuffPo, despite its web-native heritage, thinks web users “read articles.”

6. Daily Beast publishes some original work by accomplished professional writers who are paid for their work in U.S. dollars. HuffPo depends mostly on the generous contributions of people like you.

7. Daily Beast is easy on the eyes. HuffPo is a beast.

In 2009, Social Media Will Be So Over

Back in my callow youth, in 1996, I was reporting on an “online travel” technology conference for the Washington Post. It focused on the breathtaking development that the Internet would soon let people actually purchase airline tickets and hotel visits online, without a travel agent or even a phone call!

It was heady stuff during a period when Windows 95 was a bug-riddled juggernaut and connection speeds were measured in “baud.” Brains were abuzz.

But I vividly recall one of the panelists saying something like this:

No offense to the conference organizers, but in five years there will be no “online travel.” The Internet will be fully integrated into commercial transactions and the term “online travel business” won’t mean anything different from “travel business.”

I think of this often as it applies to social media. I think by the end of 2009 what we now call “social media” will start to become just “media.”

The capacity for people to interact and collaborate with each other online–using social networks, instant message platforms, content sharing sites, ratings and recommendations tools, self-publishing communities and so forth–is becoming so commonplace that the concept of “social media” as a distinct entity soon will have lost its meaning. It’ll just become part of what people mean when they say “media.”

We’re already getting close.

Just about every news site publishes blogs and allows reader comments. Surely the site visitors who use those features don’t think of themselves as using a special kind of media with its own name. Having a Facebook and/or LinkedIn page is simply what web users do. Checking out a ratings and recommendations site to pick a restaurant or hotel has lost any feeling of exotic play at the leading edge. Online dating is simply one ubiquitous method of looking for partners, not a dangerous foray into geekland.

Facebook claims 140 million active users, and adding over half a million per month. [Squishy numbers, but still.]

Twitter is now on TV, Facebook supports candidates, candidates have Twitter profiles and any cause or business that isn’t integrating some of this social media into their overall marketing/communications plans and internal processes is in danger of marginalization.

According to the authors of the seminal book Groundswell, in October 2008 only 25 percent of online users qualified as “inactives” [no engagement with social media] while the group considered “spectators” [who at least consume others' social media] was about 70 percent.

With the exception of Facebook, more complete and active engagement with the social media is still fairly low. But if the rate of adoption continues in 2009 as it did in 2008–especially if the government begins to carry out 2.0bama’s plans for digital civic participation–one year from today the use of these “social media” will be largely integrated into a majority of folks’ lives.

In which case we may find that–to bastardize media near-futurist Jay Rosen’s manifesto on “the people formerly known as The Audience“–we may begin to think about “the media formerly known as ’social’.”

The Latest Death-of-Journalism Spat, Condensed for Easy Reading!

Many pixels were spilt in last week’s sh*tspatter feud between digital news evangelist Jeff Jarvis and veteran print author Ron Rosenbaum.

I read the whole damn thing and, as a public service, present this tidy downboil. Links provided for future-of-news geeks and shut-ins.

1. Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi writes in AJR that neither journalism nor journalists are responsible for newspapers’ death spiral.

2. Jarvis responds in the Guardian, to Farhi and others, that inflexible print journalists are indeed at least partly culpable for the crisis.

3. Rosenbaum writes in Slate a bitter, personal attack on Jarvis, accusing him of profiteering and excessive glee at journalists’ misfortune.

4. Jarvis retaliates with a condescending, personal rebuttal of Rosenbaum, depicting Rosenbaum as sentimental and ill-informed.

5. The digisphere responds mostly with reflexive defenses of print journalism, from both mainstream and sidestream sources.

6. Digital news consultant [!] Amy Gahran does some impressive web reporting [!] that reveals evidence of Rosenbaum’s startling online naivete.

My two cents: Blame doesn’t matter. Journalists unwilling to think and work differently to save the profession should take the next buyout.

n.b. Each summary above is fewer than 140 characters, no longer than a Twitter update.

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