More on Twitter as journalism

A month ago I had a short but interesting online conversation with Australian journalist Renai LeMay who says Twitter is journalism. He has written a few posts on the subject on his blog and elsewhere. The best jumping off point for new readers is his Twitter’s impact on media and journalism.

LeMay is a visionary. For my money he has a great grasp of where news journalism and online media may go.

In my earlier post Can Twitter be journalism? I said I agree with him in principle. However, I believe only a fraction of Twittering journos actually use the technology as an interactive news media.

Most simply use Twitter as a broadcast medium – rather like an RSS feed. A number have Twitter accounts, but say little of real value. Perhaps 40 percent can be said to be serious Twitter journalists.

I may have been over optimistic with this estimate. Yesterday the Online Journalism Blog reported on how British newspapers use Twitter. In Newspapers on Twitter – how the Guardian, FT and Times are winning Malcolm Coles writes;

“newspapers have a total of 1,068,898 followers across their 120 official Twitter accounts – with the Guardian, Times and FT the only three papers in the top 10.”

This sounds encouraging. Buried further down the story is the comment:

“Out of 120 accounts, just 16 do something other than running as a glorified RSS feed. The other 114 do no retweeting, no replying to other tweets etc”

Coles also points out the newspaper sites do little in the way of following.

Cluetrain has barely stopped here

Both these points apply to the bulk of Twittering publications in Australian and New Zealand. My guess is journalists are encouraged by managers to promote their stories using the technology, but are actively discouraged from replying and retweeting.

There’s a precedent for this. After all, hardly any online publications in the region ever link to titles owned by other publishers – which means they are missing the point of online publishing somewhat. Until publishers encourage reporters and editors to engage with their audiences, they are going to miss out on the potential of Twitter.

Of course, the journalists who do really well at this will become media brands in their own right, which will worry the bean counters. But that’s another story…

Related articles by Zemanta

• A guide to newspapers on Twitter (blogs.journalism.co.uk)
• Newspapers on Twitter – how the Guardian, FT and Times are winning (malcolmcoles.co.uk)

The madness that is age discrimination

Age discrimination is particularly daft in knowledge-based industries.

Consider this: the average age of an Australian nurse is 45, 20 percent of registered nurses in Australia are over 55. Although nursing can be a physically demanding job, it is also intellectual. And it’s highly responsible. Few workers in the IT business or PR industry have to deal with real life and death issues on a daily basis.

To handle this work, a nurse needs to be smart and fit. So how come people are regarded as being able to do this well into their late 50s and yet people in the same age range can’t be trusted with moving noughts and ones around the inside of a computer or sending press releases to journalists?

Sure, human brains slow down as we age, but they also amass experience and wisdom. Older workers have a lot to offer. It may be true that they can’t work through the night as frequently as youngsters or go on so many of those macho programming ‘death marches’. On the other hand, older workers tend to be more reliable and stable.

Perhaps the silliest aspect of age discrimination is that while the skills shortage may not be pressing right now, it hasn’t gone away. Many knowledge based industries are finding it hard to recruit enough youngsters, as older people drift away many won’t be capable of making a return if industry wakes up and decides it needs them any way.

Before you dismiss this as nonsense think back a decade or so. Can you remember how many older computer programmers were rapidly pressed into service during the y2k scare? The telling feature of that experience was that many of the people who could have returned to clear up the y2k bugs refused to do so. Some were bitter about being dumped long before their expected retirement age, others had found life was so good without Cobol coding that nothing, not even pots of cash, could tempt them back.

Newspaper headline of the day: Wednesday

Here’s one I’m pleased I had nothing to do with.

From Mumbrella: Embarassing typo in The Australian after News Limited boss speaks about the health of the industry

See: With newspapers you’re wrong forever at Mumbrella.

Incidentally, this is why newspapers need skilled, experienced sub-editors.

Newspaper headline of the day

I found this at Freelance Unbound. It’s a classic:

Wrestling midgets are killed by fake hookers.

Via: I would kill to write a headline like this

Are knowledge workers really past it at 40 and toast at 50?

Some time ago I spoke to a technology recruiter who told me he wouldn’t dare proposing anyone over 40 to his clients.

The recruiter in question was well past this particular age and quite shamefaced, but he said clients just don’t want to see older faces waiting outside the interview room.

Information technology companies and users appear to be among the worst offenders for this, closely followed by public relations, media and telecom companies. However in some ways they are just more honest and upfront about their prejudices. Age discrimination is not restricted to these industries, you’ll find it just about everywhere, I know of one person applying to work in a department store being turned down for being too old. She was in her 40s.

Before going any further, I should disclose that I personally passed the big five-zero barrier a few months ago. I’m not complaining about my circumstances, as far as I know, most editors don’t care much about the age of their freelance journalists – in my business other factors matter.

However, I am concerned about the feedback I get from people of a similar age who read my writing on the subject.

It’s worth putting this invisible age barrier into some kind of meaningful context. People my age are not actually that old. While those of us who have just passed 50 might have been alive in the 1960s and probably can hum more than a dozen Beatles tunes, I didn’t come of age until after the Sex Pistols and the Clash appeared on the scene. One of my first printed stories was an interview with The Stranglers.

Admittedly my early years in journalism were spent hammering on a manual typewriter, but my first paying job was on an already established personal computer magazine. And yes, it is true that the last time I looked at a line of programming code, it was written in Pascal.

On the other hand, I should point out I’m a good four years younger than Bill Gates – does anyone out there regard him as over the hill?

Maybe they do. After all, he has retired. And the people recruiting staff for Microsoft probably would almost certainly regard Mr Gates as too old for employment.

Too old to rock and roll, too young to die

Cruel, unpleasant, short-sighted, wasteful and stupid are just some of the words describing the attitude of many employers towards hiring older knowledge workers.

I’ve used the word ‘older’ in the opening sentence, but in reality, the age threshold we’re talking about here is barely middle aged. Put it this way, if you’ve been around long enough to remember where the headline on this story originally came from then you’d better watch out because by many recruiters’ standards you are already over the hill.

Over the years I’ve spoken to or been in email communications with workers, employers and recruiters who believe that anyone over the age of 40 is going to find the going hard when looking for a job in most knowledge-based industries.

This gives the lie to all that fancy talk we hear about the value of experience. At the point in their life when a knowledge worker has just about built up enough personal experience to really know what they are doing, they drop off the employers’ wish list.

While the much talked about skills shortage of recent years is no longer regarded as a pressing issue, you have to ask yourself what was going on when employers bemoaned the lack of trained workers and at the same time refused to consider anyone with grey hair.

Some older workers complain they didn’t get interviews or replies to their enquiries about vacancies even at the height of the skills shortage. At the same time I heard from freshly minted graduates who couldn’t through the door. That sets the age limits for desirable recruits at roughly between 25 and 40 – a rather small percentage of most people’s productive working lives.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lifetime piling up: how many hours will you work? (billbennettnz.wordpress.com)