Once again, Twitter leads me to a great article. It is hard to believe that some people still "don't get" Twitter but when I use it as I feel it is best used, as a business tool, it is incomparable for exposing me to some great thought leaders. Unlike RSS feeds, by following certain people on Twitter I find the good stuff that's important to me more directly.
Today's example is via Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu - here's his Twitter profile - "I teach journalism at NYU, write the blog PressThink, direct NewAssignment.Net, and try to grok new media. I don't do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter." In the somewhat twisted vernacular of 140 characters he tweeted the following - "Right on, @AmandaRMichel. "Redundancy is a network fact-checking tool." See her essay on OffTheBus: http://tr.im/pJu3 Learn, @ivortossell."
I followed the link. The article that was linked to at the Columbia Journalism Review is called Get Off The Bus and it is a fascinating overview of the future of journalism. As Amanda Michel writes - "OffTheBus (OTB) [is] a citizen-powered campaign news site co-sponsored by The Huffington Post and Jay Rosen's NewAssignment, at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Inspired by Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus, which chronicled a campaign's ability to manipulate the press, we instructed our citizen journalists to steer clear of the horse race and the top-down coverage that dominates the mainstream press."
For anyone interested in the decline of newspapers and how journalism will morph into the future you could do worse than follow Rosen. Insights like this are worth following him for - another tweet of his - "In 1976, 27% had a great deal of confidence in our press; in 2006, 4.5% did. During this time journalists became far more educated. So: WTF?"
Get Off The Bus is a must read too.
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