Twitter rant

So, I was reading an article about Garry Trudeau and his twitter habit.

I encourage you to check out the entire article. Trudeau is the brains behind the Doonesbury comic strip. His twitter account is essentially a character from the comic strip as I understand it. Anyway, a media website interviewed him about using twitter.

For some reason the reporter asked Trudeau if he thinks "tvnewsers" are providing worthwhile tweets.

" None that I can find. Some reporters inoffensively tweet links to a broadcast, column or blog they've produced; they likely don't even do it themselves and they never respond to follower replies."

He goes on to say, "but in general the most baffling are the reporters who solicit their followers for questions before interviews. Please. You're supposed to be professionals. Do pilots and surgeons ask for suggestions? If you can't think of a few good questions, you and your producer are in the wrong business. It's not about getting fresh, out-of-the-bubble perspectives, as they would argue: most questions sent in are obvious or inane. It's really about flattering the followers, populist pandering."

This reporter is one of those "tvnewsers" that ask for questions. Frankly, it baffles me how a cartoonist is qualified to give expert opinions about our business. That aside, it's ludicrous for someone to be a part of social media that doesn't think interaction is important.

How often are we (news business) ridiculed for not being connected to our viewers and not understanding what they really want. So, when we ask for their input we are then criticized? In any profession, collaboration is typically the best way to find success.

I am the sole producer and host for my political show. I can read about a topic until I'm blue in the face but someone may have a great question that has actually lived through it. People are raised and educated in many different ways and can give different perspectives to different issues. One person cannot simply come up with all the perfect questions. Collaboration makes any project better. That doesn't make me unprofessional. It makes me thorough and it helps engage our viewers and encourages them to participate and watch. You don't think surgeons collaborate on finding better ways to operate and perform better? You don't think they use feedback from patients to do their jobs better? I think we know the answer to that question.

By disregarding viewer questions we are basically saying they aren't smart enough to ask smart, tough questions. That's ignorant and a big reason why viewers are not watching tv news, giving up newspaper/magazine subscriptions, etc. Too many people in the media think we are smarter than our viewers. In some cases we are, but in many cases we are not. We just have better access to the people who have the answers.

The bottom line is it's a way to interact with a new generation of viewers on a new and extremely popular platform. Even if it's not incredibly useful in a broad sense yet, it's definitely not harmful. This is new. Am I making mistakes and learning how to use this new tool? Absolutely. It's all a learning experience but at least I'm trying to learn, adapt, survive, and thrive in a changing world of journalism.

I don't know Mr. Trudeau and he's obviously a very successful man. I would like to know if he's ever received an idea for one of his cartoons from someone else that he's used in a comic strip. If he did, that sure would be unprofessional, wouldn't it?