Social Media Is Not Supposed To Pick Up The Slack of Traditional Media

Posted on | March 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

While speaking at the Social Media Club’s premiere panel presentation, I stated that it wasn’t up to social media makers to pick up the slack of traditional media. To my mind, criticizing social media for this sort of failure is like slamming movie critics for failing to produce films.

This was in response to Vancouver Sun Managing Editor Kirk LaPointe’s remark that bloggers, Tweeps and Facebookers seemed to be missing niche opportunities. He pointed to the lack of resources “traditional” media outlets were throwing at the Vancouver Paralympic games, seeming to suggest that bloggers ought to fill the vacuum. A participant from the audience suggested another example, where coverage of the Olympics protests petered out significantly after the first day.

With all due respect to LaPointe and the lady from the audience, I think their critique misses the point. It’s true that some social media creators, a very slim minority, do develop entirely original investigative pieces that are on par with reporting by paid journalists. But the vast majority of social media content developers prefer to piggy-back on the efforts of traditional media, focusing on offering alternative opinion rather than alternative raw data. Individually and collectively, social media makers largely don’t have the resources to do anything else.

Sure, we create all kinds of original content, from photos and videos to really thought-provoking essay-type blog posts. But as a rule, we don’t pick our themes from whatever the newsmakers have deemed unworthy of their attention — at least, not if we want people to actually see what we’re creating.

Why didn’t more bloggers cover the rest of the Olympics protests? I suspect it was because most realized that the real story was the hundreds of thousands of happy patriots gathered in our public spaces and an outpouring of positive feeling — not a few hundred increasingly fractured and inarticulate protesters accompanied by masked thugs intent on useless violence.

Why aren’t more bloggers covering the Paralympic Games (NOTE: the lack of coverage is only relative to the Olympic Games that preceded it. Bloggers, like regular media, are covering these Games)? The stories of courage and overcoming adversity are there to be recorded in spades, perhaps even more than with our Olympic athletes. In their absence, sponsors, reporters, bloggers and the general public have once more indicated something a little bit ugly about our society. Perhaps that is the real story here.

The bottom line is that when traditional media does its job well of investigating and providing the raw stories, social media makers can then do their job of being the gateways to that content through hyperlinks and also providing alternative opinions. There are benefits going both ways.

Category: blogging, Social Media, Speaking Events, Vancouver, Vancouver company, Vancouver Olympics 2010
Tags: Social Media > social media speaker vancouver > traditional media

Comments

2 Responses to “Social Media Is Not Supposed To Pick Up The Slack of Traditional Media”

iVision4u
March 23rd, 2010 @ 11:31 pm

Could not agree more. Regardless of how much more coverage of the Paralympics their has been in reference to what there has been in the past, there simply needed to be better distribution of that content. CTV simply did not recognize that their was an audience that wants that content and they wanted it live as well as achieved, whether that be on-line or on the TV. I have been keeping an active blog and a virtual 3D Olympics at http://blog.virtualwhistler.com and if you visit it you will notice that I have been overly positive. I loved these Olympic and Paralympic games but I was and still am rather frustrated to say the least. I WANTED TO SEE MORE PARALYMPIC GAMES. I am lucky because I live in Whistler and get to see the odd event live, but these games are quite captivating and I am saddened to put it mildly that I could not see more of the games.
Jon
March 25th, 2010 @ 12:18 pm

Great post. You also point out a significant problem with our current media infrastructure – the infrastructure itself is undergoing a mass period of transition where their have been significant cut backs in the production of news. With these cutbacks, is it possible for traditional media to do their job well? I would argue no.

As a consequence, this is impacting not only the quality of our news, but the ability of social media makers “of being the gateways to that content” as well as providing alternative opinions.

I am currently writing a blog post about these relationships and the Canadian media’s representation of H1N1 during the height of the pandemic and how it contributed to the confusion surrounding it.