Random Thoughts on Social Media & Newspapers

From The Guardian Live Event Podcast in London this month, I spent more time tweeting the event than thinking about creative things to say about the decline of newspapers that hasn't already been said a million times before.

A few random thoughts in a 140-like format from what the panelists and audience threw out during the event:

Ten metropolitan papers across the country may be closed by the end of the year in the U.S.

Subscribers are leaving papers, although they may choose to read it in a different format, perhaps on a kindle.

We learned about Michael Jackson’s death through Twitter.

We’re all the media now, but it's important for us to make some distinctions.

The New York Times and other majors are not always right, but we create our own levels of credibility over time.

Now, it’s up to us as individuals to have better crap detectors, it’s important for that kind of media literacy to sink in with the general public.

Organizations like the BBC can hang onto their brand by not necessarily being first on a particular news story. Why leap on the news when there’s other important stuff to report on.

Talk about what you know now because that’s what you know now.

Once you press the button, you can't change it. That’s why we have put six layers of safety around the production process.

The Telegraph has proved the value of exclusives. Exclusivity has a diminishing commodity value because of the nature of how quickly stories can get out there.

The thing about Twitter is that the barrier to entry has dropped to an SMS message.

The barrier is really low on Twitter - there's actually a guy who’s building supply chain toys in China who is using Twitter.

The thing about Twitter is that it works on every phone. People in the developing world can get as much utility out of Twitter as we do because they can use it on their cell phones.