Five years ago, typing on your laptop or texting on your phone during a lecture would have been considerered rude and intolerable. Today, with the use of Twitter, both are highly encouraged to make the presentation less linear and more interactional. Students at Thursday's Using New Media Presentation used the new methods of communicating in full effect.
"We can't predict everything that's going to come out. All we can do is stay with the current," Austin American Statesman's Rob Quigley summed up his efforts to keep the newspaper current, while maintaining accurate information. He uses Twitter to include the people's opinions and their views of the news. This way, he can colaborate the people's observations of what's happening to them with the research behind the facts. I thought this was comforting because news is no longer what reporters tell us, newsmakers are now the storytellers as well.
Rob Quigley, along with Dave Doolittle from the Austin American Statesman, and Elise Hu from the Texas Tribune spoke about keeping up with the times and learning to follow them. Doolitte explained how something so simple as watching the trends on Twitter could turn into a story about how a unique butterfly is hearding into Austin. He also used this as an example of why we still need journalists to set the facts straight. Many thought the butterflies were Monarch butterlies and through journalism research, he did the story in the Austin American Statesman accurately.
Instead of trying to find the old norms, these panelists used the changing times with social media to their advantage. With each generational norm and new media, as journalists that is something we will have to learn to do.
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