While riding the El train over the river (Green Line) on my way home from Oak Park this morning, I decided to take a picture of the
Chicago Sun-Times building. Apart from resembling river scenes in the latest
Batman film, (I live in Gotham city), the picture also captures a
newspaper in bankruptcy. We've got villains and superheros here.
Blago was indicted today.
What got me thinking, was that I learned about the bankruptcy filings from Twitter where Jessie Stricchiola (
@Itstricchi) announced it. I like to read physical newspapers. And Jessie was just faster for me. I can get her Tweets to my mobile while riding the El train. When I arrive home, I can open the paper. I like access to both sources of information.
The information that can be found in a paper is more verbose than available with Twitter's 140 char limit. The journalists that write professionally are better than a large fraction of the blogging public. They have to blog now themselves, these journalists. Sign of the times, the Sun-Times is, amid abounding bankruptcy.
It's interesting to note that after I Tweeted about taking the photo and my intention to post it, I sent the image from my phone to myself and set about starting this entry. As I went to open the image I saw the following email and quickly Tweeted: "
And just like that, Chicago Sun-Times follows me." Take a look at the Gmail (from me) with the attachment of the picture above, and the Twitter email that immediately follows it. Click to enlarge.
I have friends in journalism, and at least one close friend with the journalism background but who found writing about search worked better for him over a decade ago. He's wildly successful today. The fact is the chairman of Sun-Times warns that the announcements are "likely to generate considerable attention from the media," he said just media. Minimalist language, or avoidance of a painful thought?
I noticed through
social media first.
Perhaps it's another zeitgeist that I'm blogging about it, and with a photograph too. I'm not a journalist. I don't pretend to be. I know a little about it, and a little about journalistic principles that especially include getting proper facts before going to print with a story. It's all too fair that bloggers don't have to hold such principles for Freedom of Speech. Even newspapers don't really. They do it out of a proud sense for tradition.
I know social media extremely well, yet I don't too often label myself a
social media expert. I had to Tweet reply to
@fantomaster (to his RT of
@tremendousnews) that I smirked and spilled coffee on my copy of the Tribune reading the blog entry above. The title: 3 Ways of Knowing You're Talking to a Social Media Expert is a title replete with cunning sarcasm: that it's meant for Digging. Brilliant.
Any valid Social Media 'expert' will likely catch on to that one. People can always FAIL in comprehension though. They focus too much on trying to make a title themselves to repeat the exercise, or borrow from it in essence with a
listing headline. Notice anything unusual? People are so easily impressed. Even clever people can be impressed. Just don't spill oil and wreck the environment for the rest of us, please.
A practical joke-like post, intended to illicit grins and Diggs and votes on Sphinn, is sometimes (unlike Chicago Sun-Times), ethically bankrupt and can be just plain wrong. And bad information can be popular as social media popcorn too often is. It's often fluff, and it's killing paper news. Chicago Sun-Times is actually bankrupt. People are hurting in a very real sense here. It's a sign of the times, the Chicago Sun-Times.
That's what I've found distasteful about my experiences watching the social media world explode. I
have watched it explode, kinda late for me, actually. From 1999, when I started my LinkedIn profile, and the headlines about the
Information Superhighway which *was* still a word used to describe the Internet(s), to when I thought blogging was going to be a hit in 2002. I jumped on it quickly back then. Heather and I created
SEO2Go fully 7 years ago. We lost interest in blogging after 18-months when no one else seemed to get it.
Sometimes, I think it's the story of my life. Perhaps now you can understand why in that post about ways to know you're talking to a social media expert, that despite at least one off-putting word, the entry had me smirking and spilling coffee on my newspaper. If you believe all this is utter nonsense, think again. These mental images I'm painting are a sign of the times. This
is the zeitgeist.
Heather is blogging again. I'm blogging again. I can't believe it.
The once proud Chicago Sun-Times and all the newspapers in retreat, and much like the record labels before them, have thought in the past that there's no way this Internet(s) thing would undermine their profitability so badly. Don't epically FAIL to comprehend this lesson if you are riding high today. Sheer hubris can always make one blind to the danger of an upstart.
Be nimble, be good, be good at what you do
and write from the core. Do not write things based on
conjecture and speculation that you begin to believe yourself, whether about social media or whatever you want to announce that you're an expert in. For believing anything false in this regard can later return at your ruin when you least expect it. A lot of reckoning is going on. A lot of reconciling with bankruptcy protection.
I wonder where one goes to file for ethical bankruptcy protection? Nowhere.
Stay tuned.
