Paul's Web Space 2.1

Social Media Club DC meets New Media Jim

On Thursday evening, I attended a very enjoyable meeting of the Social Media Club of DC. Speaking at this event was New Media Jim, cameraman for NBC News, on the benefits and utility of Twitter, and its place in the social media landscape. He had a lot of interesting tips and stories to share. Especially fascinating was a description of tweeting and video blogging around the world with the Secretary of Defense, including stops in Hawaii, Singapore, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He also told a tale of sneaking out of the country with the President for a surprise visit to Iraq, and how some twitter buddies figured out where he was because he hadn't tweeted in over 24 hours (they take away all your comm gear when you travel with the Prez on a secret trip).

One topic that came up in Q&A was the extent to which he was required to submit his vlog posts for editing, and he was matter-of-fact regarding the requirement that he vet all footage with the editorial desk that covers DoD; I'm sure there are even security reasons. This is interesting to me, because at edweek.org we are constantly struggling with how to treat blogs from an editorial perspective. We have editorial blogs that may get a light read from an editor (but nothing like the editorial process undergone by our regular reporting for Edweek the newspaper, web-only same as print). We also host blogs written by outsiders (until recently including Alexander Russo), who have extremely wide discretion to write almost anything with no pre-screening whatsoever. For a complete line-up, see our edweek.org blogs widget in my blog/siteroll to the right —> .

Then again, what can I say in my non-work blog about work, or about politics? We don't have many of these extracurricular blogs at Edweek (that I know of), but this is a policy issue too — said blog policies being more-or-less under my purview, and in need of updating. Our needs may also be very different than those of NBC News, because our beat is limited and they cover everything. Jim also related an interesting bit of controversy generated by the fact that he posted his vlog to MSNBC.com without offering it to the pool first.

I unfortunately had to leave the meeting right after it broke up, so I didn't get to make these comments to anyone in person, but I hope to be able to attend more of these events - good speaker, good crowd, too much traffic to get there on time from Maryland. Oh well. I had to go to an Oxymorons band practice — whole band including great substitute bass player, with only one practice before next week's gig at the Quarry House in Silver Spring (on Thursday 12/6 @ 8:30 - you should come!) Afterwards, some of us were talking about trying to get a USO gig in Iraq (which seemed even cooler after hearing Jim's talk — great way to support the troops while opposing the war, if that's your viewpoint). At the same time others of us were watching talking cats on YouTube. (I prefer the translation.)    Link: http://yale.facebook.com/event.php?eid=18508278808&ref=sharehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

¶ 1:47 PM | Permalink | |
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