Andy Howell Column: Day Cops Reporter Plugs Into His Social Media Tools

An interesting story, particularly in re: how the competition for readers has spread well beyond the print pages to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook et al.

By: Bob Becker

The SE has interesting column up this morning by Andy Howell discussing how reporters at the SE are using social media to both gather information, tips, etc. and to publicize and spread, in fact, to market their own stories. He offers Mr. Schwebke as an example of a full-on "pojo" --- print on line journalist ---[Mr. Howell really likes that term, but then, he insisted on re-dubbing the Newsroom at the SE the "Content Center" so maybe his judgment on naming things is not as sound as one might hope.]

Andy Howell's column is here:

• Day cops reporter plugs in to his social media tools

It is an interesting story, particularly in re: how the competition for readers has spread well beyond the print pages to You Tube, Twitter, Facebook et al. [alas, the NY Times is peddling it's paper edition these days as the "crinkle" edition. Sigh....] .

Things have indeed changed. Jon Talton [long time reporter, columnist for the Phoenix Sun and now the Settle Times] and crime novelist recently published "Deadline Man," a mystery with an old time print guy working for a dying Seattle daily as its protagonist. Kind of interesting how the novel describes the newspaper biz these days. From Talton's novel:

Newsrooms are quiet now. It gives me the creeps. If typewriters and teletypes are long gone, so are most of the loud, profane, eccentric characters that used them, yelled 'copy!' to summon the gofer copy boys and girls, and didn't necessarily play well with others, particularly their bosses. The best of them had high-octane talent and taught me much. As a young reporter, I missed deadline by eleven minutes, prompting a screaming tirade from the city editor, who somehow was able to accomplish this bit of mentoring without ever removing the cigar from his mouth. I never missed deadline again. Now shouting is frowned upon,much less smoking. Shout and they'll send you to HR for a talking-to, or maybe they'll Meyers-Briggs you, so you know what an inappropriate, extroverted, cynical bastard you really are, and how it's offensive, especially to women.

It's not a particularly good mystery, but is interesting for its protagonist's asides about newspapers, their decline and the reasons therefor. Mostly, he said, in cost cutting the papers abandoned quality [by which he means abandoned investigative reporting and went instead with simply rephrasing press releases.] Since we talk a lot about the SE at WCF, thought some might find Talton's novelistic grumbling interesting.