Russell Simmons removes a (what I assume to be a parody) video regarding Harriet Tubman. And apologizes for offending sensibilities. Probably for the best. Black social slapped that stupid down, fast and hard.
If you need an explanation of “black social” then you probably need WaySouth Media’s consulting service
I’ve been watching everything the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) social media person has been doing with their social media outreach via their Twitter/blog/Facebook over the last few critical weeks.
I even met the APS social media person at the governor’s press conference to announce the results of the state’s investigation the other day. We set-up media shop next to each other, coincidentally. 
And WOW what an amazing transformation their social media game has undergone! Just in the last two weeks alone.
Suddenly, they are very responsive to the world around them. To their community here in Atlanta. They’re even dabbling in transparency and straight-up honesty too.
The live Tweets from @APSUpdate during a public forum with the new super Davis last week were very candid. And full of helpful and useful information.
What a difference a criminal investigation can make, eh? But the thing about social media, as any serious practitioner can tell you, social media is a garden; it only produces when meticulously tended.
Let’s watch and see. And participate, cultivate, in this transformation too.
Several new media things jump out today… Facebook is such an amazing tool for tracking legislation going through the legislative process. The Sunday Sales/Senate Bill 10 may or may not be before the Rules Committee today. Advocates such as Rich Sullivan and co. are at the Georgia State Capitol now Tweeting and posting Facebook updates about this one bill’s progress.
Lobbyista, media, advocates and ordinary folk, take note! Could save tons on tasseled loafer polishing costs by not having to hoof it along the hallways of the Gold Dome. Watch and learn from the comfort of your connection.
Then again, just being at the Capitol on a busy day is exciting in itself. Go live and in person whenever you can. Just report back for us what is going on… as it happens. Social media tools make it very easy to do. (They’ve got great wi-fi at the Dome.)
Other quick note… when giving interviews to text-only outlets avoid passive language, such as Michael Bond’s here. While it’s earnest, and might work in a broadcast environment, it always prints bad.
Councilman Michael Julian Bond pointed out that Sandy Springs and DeKalb County have full government participation and the continual council snubs are “almost getting to the point where it is beginning to be offensive.”
Elsewhere, Bob Barr believes in the intended effects of mass media propaganda. The best money can buy. Cute, huh?
One more… from what I hear, bloggers are already revolting on donating free content to @11AliveNews/@gannett‘s Where U Live project. Must give back, news farms! Must. Think of better ways to give back to the blogger (on-air time comes to mind), and you might get more better content from ’em.
Today is the deadline to nominate your fave Georgia journo/blogger now for The Atlanta Press Club 2010 awards. It’s easy to do.
That’s it for the morning. Make it a great use of new media day!
Wonder if I’ll learn anything?!
This particular social media swirl is playing out on my territory, and promises to challenge me to TRY to keep up! But you know I’m the woman for that job.
So, let’s over-simplify until I can do a full (video) report on this matter: Atlanta Public Schools (APS) is in a big brewhaha of a mess. It’s a two-prong mess. I won’t go into full mess details here, as that’s the AJC’s job. But first is the CRCT cheating scandal, and second is the APS board’s probationary status.
All could come to a lovely head of face-to-face steam at tomorrow’s APS board meeting, open to the public at 4:30pm, FYI. At APS. (Stay tuned for that live eventing. I may live-stream here. Haven’t decided yet if I want to venture out from behind the laptop yet though. And come early to sign-in. Who knows what APS might do about the posted times.)
What’s fascinating, in that horrible fascinating way, is being able to watch the social media tactics and approaches (I’m loath to call them *strategies* as it’s all rather amateurish right now) present… almost in real time. Even I may not be able to follow it all. But I’m sure gonna try.
Let’s explore, with a handy scoring system, where we are so far:
1.) APS social media scorecard – 1. And they get a score of 1 (out of 10) only because they have at least established a Twitter feed for their sunny-side-up bits. Sorry, APS. But you haven’t even touched your Facebook page since the summer of 2009. Not much going on your website. And APS Superintendent Beverly Hall’s letter explaining the accredidation probationary status APS is now operating under arrived at homes via the Backpack Network. Call Hermione for a better spell soon, APS. Or you’ll be overwhelmed. If you’re not already.
2.) A Facebook Group called Atlanta School Board: Step Up or Step Down already has 266 members, and was pointed out to me by an APS teacher, so seems some APS teachers are banding together with APS parents. And heating-up neighborhood discussion boards and email chains and petitions. That’s good. I give ’em a 6. They’ve got a’ways to go to keep up with this other group that’s sprung from the PR mess though.
3.) ReCallAPS, so far, is posting fewer Facebook friends than the above group, but I’m certain they will catch-up and surpass. They’ve got a blog going already, and a Twitter feed; Twitter being what will fuel the fires the fastest. Their message seems wishy-washy though, so I’m just giving them a 5. For right now.
For what it’s worth, social media is everyone’s field to play in for communications – crisis or otherwise. Have at it. Make it work for you. Just know it’s a game you don’t want to be on the sidelines merely watching.
Apply this case study of how to use Twitter for breaking news to any crisis communication effort you need to stay on top of. Click photo to enlarge. From NYCTheBlog:
As you likely know, there was a deadly shooting in Arizona yesterday afternoon that has left six people dead, according to The New York Times. At approximately 2:00pm, Caitie Parker, a high school class mate of the shooter, noted on Twitter that the incident happened “2 minutes from my house.” When the media discovered her, likely because of a smart interview Anthony DeRosa was conducting with here, at least 35 public requests for comment, phone calls and interviews—from local newspapers to national news networks—came into Catie on Twitter from all over the country, as well as overseas.
Article in full here.
I watched something very vital and important on Atlanta’s PBA Channel 30 on the (public) service show called In Contact – an honest and frank discussion about obesity in young black girls. And how this epidemic of obesity is, essentially, robbing young black girls of their childhoods, as the rate of sexual activity for obese girls under 13 is very high.
It was a deadly sobering and scary scenario. One that was well-presented on the show by experts in the Atlanta community on the matter of childhood obesity. After watching the show I was eager to share this media discussion within my social networks… online of course.
Well whoa Nellie! for me, as the show In Contact does not seem to exist online. You can pay a lot of money for a hard copy of a show, by some snail mail process though. And sure, who’s going to do all that just to share it on their Facebook?
(And don’t ask me what PBA30 hasn’t been doing over the years of the rise of social media to build their social networks because I sure couldn’t tell you.)
I can tell you however, old Atlanta media geezers in charge, and let me say it ONE MORE TIME LOUDLY… if you do NOT put your media online then the online community can NOT (easily) help you share your mission and your message included within that original media. Put the stuff online, fer chrissake!
Then ASK people within your social networks (you have been working hard building out those, right?) to help you share that media… and YOUR message along with it.
How many times do I have to tell you old dino Atlanta media people this? Good grief it gets maddening as media outreach solutions are so very simple nowadays.
Less yapping, less studies, less dubiously inflated old-school production budgets (you know who you are doing this in Georgia), less 200-page proposals that never get read – and more social media doing.
Trust me, it’s not hard to do… AND it works.
No, Carol Porter has no signature fragrance. I doubt she’s worn much bling out on the relentless, red-clay Georgia campaign trail for Lt. Governor, either. However, she is doing something just the way Kim Kardashian does it – Carol Porter is synching her real-time social media seamlessly into her online campaign presence.
Go to CarolPorter4GA and you are immediately connected to Porter herself – not to a static, processed appeal for donations as most campaign websites tend to present. Porter’s Facebook updates are presented as fresh, updated content on the homepage.
Porter works her Facebook updates very seriously, posting info and news of her day ahead by 6am that morning. You’ve got to be a seriously early riser to keep-up with Carol Porter, whether in social media or out on the grueling campaign trail. There are busy women; then there’s Carol Porter.
I recently completed a 4-month long project during the course of the Georgia General Assembly’s 2010 session; from opening day to Sine Die (last day)… give or take a week or two off here and there when the legislators had to excuse themselves to, like, go figure stuff out.
This online video project was taken on with veteran southern politics newsman, Tom Baxter, at the behest of CBS-Atlanta, WGCL. You can review some of the 30 videos created and promoted here.
CBS-Atlanta had no designated political reporter at the onset of the project, that began in January of 2010. They needed to supplement their broadcast product with targeted, specialized online media. Not more “Tough Questions” ambush-style product (Saltzman is perfectly capable of THAT gig all by her scowling self), but with more feature-type of media offerings from a seasoned reporter who understands Georgia politics.
Baxter delivered the goods. At times it seemed as if there wasn’t a single person, of the daily hordes walking up the gorgeous marble staircases of the State Capitol, that he didn’t have a full bio on… stored in his usually-in-need-of-combing head. In four months of activity, I saw only one politician refuse an interview request with Baxter, and that was a pol who had just been demoted by the House Majority (or Senate, I forget) leadership, so the pol had to go off and lick his wounds, thus brushing-off Mr. B. in his haste to process all that new-bad karma.
So well regarded was Mr. B in the long history of work he’s done in southern political (print) journalism that powerful people seek him out to have a moment with him. Hell, the dude could just stand in the hall with a mic turned on (as I rolled media card) and every single person in the Capitol would come by to say their piece – and be delighted to be doing so. It makes ’em feel special.
Baxter doesn’t deal in rumor and innuendo. Nor commando-style microphone shoving into faces whilst yelling ridiculous questions. All you’re ever going to get from a bizarre method like that is decades of resentment. You’re certainly not going to forge relationships. More like you’re just banishing yourself into the political wilderness, for no apparent reason, where you’ll be left alone with no one to go on the record for you when you might need them, say ten years down the road of your mutual careers in politics and/or journalism.
That or either you’re in it for your personal careerism, perhaps thinking you are getting yourself off to that mythical place that no longer exists called “the networks.” Like anyone wants to go THERE nowadays. It’d would be the journalistic equivalent of being shipped to Siberia if you ask me, which of course no one did.
Politics is local. Anything you do at the national level is just pack mentality pointlessness of rote meme recitation to mass media consuming drones. For a bigger paycheck and a whopping mortgage in Arlington, VA, with Ivy League to pay out the ass for bratty kids who should be sent to community college anyway.
For the most part, other than a wild flame-out or two here and there, politics is a long haul endeavor. And if you don’t cover it with that in mind you’ll get nothing. Nada. (Just ask Dale Russell.) If you don’t ask nicely, you’ve just made yourself a career-long enemy… if you are young, unwise, and think that is how news must be churned – with impolite, disrespectful behaviors as a motivator. And you can go back to your newsroom and call it news if you wish. Or a report. But trust me, it will not be journalism.
Baxter is a genuine journalist. The news he writes and the stories he tells come from the people in power and elsewhere who are willing to go on the record and talk openly and with transparency about the political process. And there are never just two sides of a story. Rather, especially in politics, it’s more like there are 10-15 sides of a story. Baxter lets ’em all whisper their various POVs in his ear, weighs all the chatter with his years of experience in the game, and then he writes. Or in our multimedia case, talks out perfectly crafted sentences off the top of his head – no script, no rehearsal. Dude was a born TV broadcaster and never knew it!
Anyway… getting to the point of this blog post, which was supposed to be about money and budgets, but if you’re going to entertain a thought towards southern politics Baxter will get your attentions. So, on to the point… here’s the gear list and pricing (retail) for what amounted to a series, an archive really, of about 30 videos. 30 videos, most in the 3-minute range, that incorporate what will be Georgia’s 2010 political history. And yes, I wish news orgs would see themselves more as archivists and librarians who also exist to serve the greater historical good, but that’s a whole other discussion, eh?
So there. For under $500. you too can get yourself a multimedia broadcast production facility. Moreorless. Of course that’s just the gear. You must then determine just how much time and cost you are going to invest in your multimedia online endeavor. What is worth the multimedia online treatment in your shop? And what is it worth to you in this social media, online world we’re all creating and growing day by day?
You tell me. Or better yet… let WaySouth Media tell you.
From the Sency founder, Evan Britton:
“As you know Sency makes it easy for anyone to search the real time web to see what’s being said right now. We have launched the capability to let users find out what people are saying right now from 13 major US Cities.
In addition to letting the user search for what’s being said inside an actual city for a given keyword, Sency for Cities will also show the 10 most talked about topics right now in a given city.
The 13 cities included in this launch are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
There are many potential uses for Sency for Cities, here are a few of them:
-Sports fans can now see, in real time, what people in their city, and rival cities, are saying about a given team or player.
-When a new movie, commercial, or product launches; businesses can now see how the sentiment from the public differs in each of the major cities.
-When there is an important event or breaking news inside a major city – anyone can see how people inside the city, whom are directly affected, are reacting. This can be compared with what outsiders are saying from cities not directly involved with the breaking news or event.
-The current hot topics for a given city can show what is happening and being most talked about in a city right now. This can introduce new events to users while highlighting the topics that a city is buzzing about right now.
More information can be found at http://sency.com/cities.php
Some have gone before me. Bloggers venturing forth to blog the Georgia General Assembly (don’t ever call it The Legislature) session at the State Capitol. And gotten themselves in a bit of a sticky wicket for their nondisclosure efforts in the process. (Atlanta political blogger Andre Walker of course comes to mind.) No one has ever gone video blogging down Georgia State Capitol ways. Until now.
I spent last week getting the lay of the land at the Gold Dome. Tagging alongside (trying to keep up is more like it) with veteran political newsman, Tom Baxter. Baxter and I are video blogging for CBSAtlanta, Channel 46, WGCL, a Meredith property.
The special web page they’ve created to house our multimedia materials is Covering The Capitol. (I do photos too.) And yeah, it’s not real pretty. Not yet. There is the proverbial ways to go. The video player won’t do right in some browsers. (Although it works fine if you select the videos via the “Videos” tab up top.)
Our videos are sure not real pretty either. Not yet. We’re all on a steep learning curve right now. Like Chloe, I’ve got new software and new gear issues. And also like Chloe, no one is the least bit sympathetic. Maybe if I wish hard enough my Jack Bauer will emerge from the mist, but I ain’t holding my breath on that ever happening. Sometime around the end of the session, mid March or so, I expect we MAY begin to level off of the steep ride up. I hope you bear with us though as we’re offering up loads of unique Georgia political media you simply will not find anywhere else.
My hat’s off, way off, to CBSAtlanta (on Twitter as @CBSAtlanta) for trying new online media things… and for having an open mind with their willingness to let me and Baxter have a go at in-depth political coverage during the course of the 2010 General Assembly session. As I like to say, “be the media you want to see.” That’s CBSAtlanta all over – a true community news outlet.
This is an amazing opportunity for me. To tag along into the Celestine Sibley press gallery, to march along the floors of the stunningly gorgeous State Capitol, meeting and greeting as we go, is infinitely thrilling and fascinating. For instance, after one week I know where the “good” lobbyists hang and where the “bad” ones perch. I know a few new faces and names by now, good and bad and in between ones. I don’t yet know where all the bodies are buried, but rest assured Mr. Baxter does!
(The remains to your left live in the Governor’s Capitol press office, BTW.)
I feel like a cub news producer again. A trainee. The new girl. And that’s ok. I am nothing if not adaptable, and our system of government in Georgia, as we face a fiscal crisis such as we’ve never experienced, is having to adapt… like it or not. These are exciting political times for Georgia. Out with the old and in with something new. (At least in theory, right?)
I’m delighted to have a front row seat for the 2010 session to share with you. Tom and I will be using every mobile social media tool we have (before our batteries need re-charging at least) to bring you word and media from our State Capitol. Heck, before the session’s over I hope to have done some live streams and broken at least one very juicy story.
Follow me as SpaceyG on Twitter (I’ll be tagging material as #GALeg there) and follow Tom Baxter as twombax. CBSAtlanta is just that on Twitter, and their special General Assembly page is here. Friend Baxter and me on Facebook. CBSAtlanta is on Facebook here. Watch CBSAtlanta broadcasts in the mornings, at 4pm, 6pm and 11pm for special broadcasting appearances too by Baxter.
And of course, if you’ve got a great tidbit you’d like me to turn my under-$200 HD camera on be sure to tell all. You know how to get in touch. Hope I see you on the floating marble staircases. Can I get a quick interview if so?!
Yes, it’s about time I finally built-out the website for WaySouth Media, Inc. And here it is, a genuine work in progress. So I’d like your feedback as we all move forward. Thank you for your time and patience in this media matter.
Atlanta, GA. 10-22-2009 — Reading the cover story in today’s AJC about social media and the Atlanta mayoral race is like dealing with an ADD person – it’s wildly unfocused and all over the place. And not the least bit interested in hearing what you have to say. Except when it does. From the AJC:
And, while the 2009 race will be the city’s first in which social media play a major role, even campaign officials admit being uncertain whether they can turn Facebook friends and Twitter followers into voters. Facebook and Twitter accounts for the major candidates include everything from diehard supporters to spies from other campaigns to folks from far away locales with no connection to the campaign.
Grayson Daughters, a social media consultant in Atlanta, said the move to electronic communications in campaigns is so new no one knows what value it brings. Everybody knows they’ve got to do it, though.
“These are very, very powerful tools,” Daughters said. “These are databases they have compiled. Once these people are in your database, you have access to them 24/7.”
Will social media drive boots to the polls, so to speak, this year? We’ll know more on November 4th… if we have some, any, exit polling data to give us an idea of what did motivate people to get up off their arses and go vote for a particular candidate in the Atlanta mayoral race of 2009.
Hint, hint pollsters! Help us. We’re dying out here without good, localized data to cite. Hello KSU’s Center for Sustainable Journalism! Emory? InsiderAdvantage/PollPosition? CNN? AJC? Anyone?
It really would be genuinely super-fantastic to have some genuine data in regards to social media and politics. Some kinda science behind the wildly speculative and hypothetical ya-ya that surround social media use in southern politics right now.
Otherwise we’ll just have to slog through more rambling stories that leave us only scratching our heads in media bewilderment.
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Brother can you spare a boat?
It took four hour for the Atlanta Fire Department (AFD) to get their rescue personnel into a rescue boat during recent flooding in the city – as AFD floundered smack dab in the middle of one of the wealthiest zip codes in the city, if not the entire country.
Four hours to acquire a boat in a portion of a city where people have likely dozens of boats, of a vast variety, idling in backyard garages. Dozens. Just minutes away from a flooded creek from which people needed immediate rescuing.
According to The Sunday Paper, when AFD went broke during this recession they were forced to sell the only rescue boat they owned before the big flood of September 2009.
So be it. If you need a boat in 30327 and you can’t put out a plea to any number of neighbors and citizens nearby, in a time of crisis, who would gladly and urgently have offered a boat to assist in the rescue of neighbors and fellow citizens in the Internet Age, then that’s a sorry state of communication – a state of communication that illuminates just how critical it is that our social networks include, and overlap with, government entities and the people they serve and seek to assist. And vice versa.
During the flooding the week of September 20, 2009 in Atlanta there was almost no interruption to communication infrastructure such as cellular networks and Internet services.
Had anyone on the fire department rescue team asked any 30327 resident, bystander, onlooker or neighbor to help locate a boat, chances are someone could have stood right by the rising creek, whipped out a phone (smart kind or othewise) and called someone to assist with the immediate loan of an appropriate boat.
A 30327 resident might have sent out an urgent request on a neighborhood message board for a boat. Someone could have used their Twitter (and the #atlflood hashtag) or Facebook network to locate a boat.
If the Atlanta Fire Department had built their own Twitter and/or Facebook social network of citizens of the areas of Atlanta they serve, AFD could have used that network, immediately, to locate and acquire a boat — within the hour of need I’d guess.
But first you must, of course, HAVE a social network to ask things of and to utilize in times of crisis! It’s not that the fire department did not have a boat to call their own; rather they could not get their hands on ANY boat for four hours… while they were surrounded in a sea of possible boats.
I recently witnessed a local Atlanta social network jump into action to assist an elderly neighbor who was discovered living without water service for over a year. Once people in the neighborhood became aware of the neighbor’s plight, and what was needed to help the situation, an entire community and social network kicked in to serve and assist. Virtually instantly. All because one email was sent to an established social network. In that particular case, a network created via a simple, free Yahoo! Message Board/group.
In times of crisis, people want to serve. People will serve and assist in whatever way, small or large, that they are capable of. Any disaster scenario has proved that over and over again.
But it takes communication to let people know what exactly is needed to kick-start our inherent sense of service. And it takes leadership. And it takes foresight.
Now, especially in a deep recession, it very well may take an established social network. Because a social network is comprised of all kinds of people – people who are willing and able and eager to serve… in most cases.
In the case of severe flooding, your social network may very well have just the boat you need… if you ask that of your network.
Grayson Daughters and Tessa Horehled talk using Twitter hashtags in crisis communication and disaster relief during the Atlanta, Georgia flood of September 2009. #atlflood
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Please visit MediaConnection for even more conversations with key players in the social media milieu.
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