Timing Your Tweets For Success

It is a simple game plan when it comes to Twitter. The more people your tweets reach, the more established you can become as a credible source of news.

In this article on Mashable.com, Leonhard Widrich explains three apps that help you track the timing of your tweets.

The apps serve as a way to observe when tweeting would be most efficient for you.

The apps use a multitude of data in order to decide when your tweets would be most effective.

Everything from followers tweet times and density to number of retweets is tracked in order to determine optimal tweet times.

While there is no solid data that tweeting at certain times will help up your followers it certainly can't hurt anything.

The most important aspect of your tweets is their accuracy. But, if no one sees them are they really doing their job?

Sourcing for your tweets is another important part of tweeting. Variation is the key so people don't get bored with what you have to say.

In this case timing may not be everything but, it isn't something to be ignored.

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Diversity Workshop Celebrating 30 Years

An article by the NYDailyNew.com, covered a journalism workshop, helped to shed light on the struggling problem of diversity in newsrooms.

New York University's annual Urban Journalism Workshop is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year. The workshop, offered to high school students around the country, is a week-long program that provides students with a crash course in newspaper reporting, writing and editing.

Program coordinator, Pamela Newkirk, spoke of diversity issues several times in the article, emphasizing the alarming decrease of minority journalists in recent years. The numbers in the aforementioned article placed the decrease at .82 percent; further showing that while African-Americans make up 15 percent of the population nationally, they only represent 4.68 percent of newsroom jobs in the United States.

While this article's main focused appeared to have been on the Anniversary of the workshop, I found the purpose of the workshop to be far more important. The numbers presented about the presence of diversity in journalism were alarming, and it would appear that if something is not done quickly, these numbers will continue to decrease.

Thus, it is great that the workshop is still running and able to celebrate a 30th year; however, the purpose of the workshop is far greater and it is important that their mission be carried out. If not, journalism, and all it stands for, is once again at risk of failing completely--as I have repeatedly stressed in my previous blogs.

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Amy Winehouse: Dead or Alive?

When you look in the paper, on the internet, or check your emails the first couple headlines you see are most likely going to be about Amy Winehouse. Amy Winehouse is dead and died a while ago. Her coverage over why she died, her new release, and her childhood are getting old and not newsworthy anymore.

"The world will finally get to hear her music as she leaves the world unexpectedly" says MTV reporters. These types of headlines fill the media still today. The media is not covering her death on TV as much today but the internet is still filled with Winehouse's death.

In the eyes of an audience member watching the media forces me to believe that sometimes journalists don't know what to write about so go back on old deaths such as Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse. Yes they lived a great life and produced great music but when is enough, enough?

In todays time, journalists should be covering the world series, the war, the president elections, Halloween drama, and the list goes on. Personally I like to hear about current news and don't want to dwell back on deaths and old news.

Lastly Amy Winehouse was not a Michael Jackson, Elvis Presly, or Madona. Amy was a pop singer who was average. She didn't have sold out shows or number one hit CD's. Therefore the media not only needs to stop Amy's intense coverage, they also need to realize that she wasn't a huge artist.

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Rebelling Against Establishment

Here is a prime example of a journalist going for what he deems 'newsworthy'; however, does it come at a cost?

Jason Mattera, who wrote an ambush interview on Vice President Biden, is the new subject around Washington.

"I don't really care what the Washington establishment says," says Mattera who is the editor of Human Events. "If they want to give me affirmation or condemnation, it doesn't matter to me. My audience is not D.C. It's to get it ricocheted around the country."

I find those very encouraging words, that you don't have to focus on the one area you are living at to have your audience, but to branch out and aim for people all around the world.

Picture: creativecommons.org
Article: poynter.org

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