{"id":1072,"date":"2008-10-09T22:19:08","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T05:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2008-10-09T22:19:08","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T05:19:08","slug":"twitter-and-local-mainstream-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2008\/10\/09\/twitter-and-local-mainstream-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter and local mainstream media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victoria’s local paper, the Times-Colonist<\/a>, which is part of the CanWest<\/a> empire and therefore not a particularly local<\/em> paper at all, recently began twittering<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, I was really surprised to see @timescolonist<\/a> show up on such a site.\u00a0 Not only that, but its editor-in-chief, Lucinda Chodan<\/a>, also tweets: @lchodan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had a conversation with someone about this; he claimed that CanWest will lose brand identity by letting its newspapers and editors and reporters twitter, and that it shows they’re out of touch, not least because there’s no revenue in it for them.\u00a0 His argument around losing brand identity was based on his idea that by tweeting, the papers were becoming just like you or me — like anybody who can type.<\/p>\n

But that’s so wrong!\u00a0 It made me wonder whether he understands social media.\u00a0 For example, tweets by @timescolonist have actually prompted me to click through to articles, since the tweets started to include URLs to the stories.\u00a0 In other words, @timescolonist’s function is to drive traffic to articles.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, by tweeting stories that seem to have regional and local relevance, @timescolonist is actually able to restore some measure of local relevance.\u00a0 And I can tweet back at them, as I did for example when last night @timescolonist live-tweeted a local town hall federal election candidates meeting, and I twittered my appreciation of this.\u00a0 Today there’s a story in the paper about this meeting, but @timescolonist’s live-tweet last night (without URLs, as the story wasn’t yet online or in the paper) helped build a kind of loyalty to (and interest in) the paper with me, who has been a harsh critic of the paper in the past (and often still is).<\/p>\n

The other thing is that newspapers might, just might, start to understand that it’s no longer just a broadcast market, but a niche market.<\/p>\n

The niche was derided as small potatoes for too long, but in actuality (actualite – currently, current affairs), niche markets might well be the new gold mine.<\/p>\n

By tweeting, @timescolonist (and even @lchodan, whose tweets are rare, but very interesting when they do come) can possibly change minds and potentially win allies.\u00a0 By twittering, they’re almost humanizing themselves in my eyes.\u00a0 If I were cynical, I’d say, What a snow job<\/em>.\u00a0 But I’m not that<\/em> cynical, and so I’m intrigued.\u00a0 There are real people behind this after all.<\/p>\n

And every person is a niche.<\/p>\n

That’s savvy marketing and it might just work.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it’s two-way.\u00a0 It’s not a one-way operation, where they work on me,\u00a0 Jane Customer.\u00a0 They<\/em> will be transformed, too, because they won’t hold my interest with a voice that’s just another suit.\u00a0 Twitter (i.e., social media, real inter-action) might just make them interesting enough to pay attention to once more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victoria’s local paper, the Times-Colonist, which is part of the CanWest empire and therefore not a particularly local paper at all, recently began twittering. Admittedly, I was really surprised to see @timescolonist show up on such a site.\u00a0 Not only that, but its editor-in-chief, Lucinda Chodan, also tweets: @lchodan. I had a conversation with someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1652,1651,1895],"tags":[64773,3262,3261,64767],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authenticity","category-local_not_global","category-times_colonist","tag-newspapers","tag-social_media","tag-twitter","tag-victoria"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}