The Boston Herald today follows up its social-media story with more from Dave Wedge and Jessica Heslam and a column by Margery Eagan.
In order to bolster her argument that Amy Derjue, spokeswoman for Boston City Council president Mike Ross, is tweeting when she ought to be working, Eagan quotes something Derjue posted on Monday at 10:11 p.m.
I’m not here to defend Derjue, Mac Daniel or David Isberg, who have created something of an appearance problem for their bosses, even though I’ve seen no real evidence that they’ve been slacking off. (In fact, I think Heslam gets at the appearance problem nicely here.)
But quoting something a city employee posted at a time when she was clearly off-duty is out of bounds.
Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub has some big-time fun with the Boston Herald’s story on city employees who use Facebook and Twitter during work hours. Gaffin reproduces a photo of the Herald reporters who wrote the story, Jessica Heslam and Dave Wedge, from — yes — Heslam’s Facebook account.
“What are they using them for?” asks Gaffin. “What are they hiding? Ooh, insinuation is fun!”
Kidding aside, you have to admit that there’s an appearance problem with the way some city employees are using social media. Heslam and Wedge focus on Amy Derjue, a former Boston Magazine blogger who was hired earlier this year to serve as City Council president Mike Ross’ $39,000-a-year spokeswoman.
Derjue is something of a young-woman-about-town, and I follow her on both Facebook and Twitter. (If you page through her 340 Facebook friends, you’ll see a wide array of local media and political folks, including Gaffin, me — and Wedge.) Some of her posts make me cringe, and Heslam and Wedge dutifully provide some cringe-worthy examples. But I’ve never heard anyone suggest she wasn’t smart, hard-working and energetic. For what it’s worth, she has complained to me on behalf of her boss, which suggests dedication to her job.
More to the point, most of us — and you can be sure Derjue falls into this category — are never fully off work. If we’re expected to tend to business when we’re off-duty, then we have to be allowed some fun during the formal workday as well. And, as Gaffin writes, “Why, it takes sheer seconds to post something to Facebook or Twitter.”
An aside that may help illustrate my point. Yesterday John Robinson, editor of the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., tweeted that he was being yelled at by a “legislator who resigned in disgrace.” When I responded at how impressed I was with his multi-tasking, he replied, “Yes, tweeting while yelling. What else am I supposed to do? Listen?” This was not a private conversation — it was seen by all 1,196 of Robinson’s followers and all 2,019 of mine. Welcome to 2009.
Ross tells the Herald that he hired Derjue in part for her social-networking expertise. And, indeed, Ross has a pretty lively Twitter feed and Facebook account. For Derjue to post to her personal sites while working on her boss’ would, as Gaffin says, take “sheer seconds.” You can question her judgment, but her social-media activities are not evidence of dereliction.
Why, to cater to their audience’s every whim, of course. So kudos to WBUR Radio (90.9 FM), which responded to my whining on Twitter about the lack of a downloadable MP3 of last night’s Massachusetts Senate debate by posting one this afternoon.
I was able to download it onto my iPod and listen while driving home. The experience was enlightening — and, no, I definitely don’t mean the debate.
I can’t think of a better lesson for journalism students.
Earlier today I was attending an orientation for freshmen and transfer students when word came in on my BlackBerry, via the Salem News’ Twitter feed, that the Danvers Town Hall was on fire. (Media Nation’s world headquarters is located in Danvers.)
By 4:30 p.m., the News had posted a reasonably complete story with a Google map and an 11-photo slideshow.
Ten years ago, needless to say, the News would have been silent until the next day.
Tomorrow I’ll be on a pre-conference panel called “Social Networking, Social Media: Facilitating the Pro-Am Approach to Journalism and Building Social Communities,” part of a program titled “Reinventing Journalism and Yourself: One Tweet, One Friend at a Time.” I wish I could invite everyone, but I’m told there’s no more seating left.
I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll be doing. I’m more likely to post Twitter updates; you can follow me here. This afternoon I succeeded at posting a photo to TwitPic with my new BlackBerry, so I’ll try to do a bit of that as well.
The student-run Huntington News is taking the social-media route to covering the collapse of a cornice on a Northeastern University-owned residence hall on Huntington Avenue.
Editor Maggie Cassidy used her Twitter account to get out the word that the News had posted a story online. And the photos were posted to the paper’s Flickr account.
Breaking news, from a paper that only comes out every other week during the summer. Good job, although the Flickr link from Twitter doesn’t work [note: now fixed]; pick it up from the story (or from here) instead.
Whoever was posting to Twitter as Boston Globe editor Marty Baron has renamed himself Fake Marty Baron. Good. His (her?) tweets have been mildly amusing. The fakery was not.
How weird is this? On the same day that someone pretending to be Boston Globe editor Marty Baron popped up on Twitter, I heard from Baron’s predecessor — the real Matt Storin — on Twitter as well. You can follow Storin here.
So what did I find in my inbox this morning? A message from someone named Marty Baron, letting me know that he was following me on Twitter. Well, I started following him and sent him a private note to make sure it was really him.
As it turns out, it’s not Boston Globe editor Marty Baron, but someone pretending to be him. “It’s not me,” Baron told me by e-mail. Such gamesmanship is far from unusual on Twitter, though it looks like the normally savvy Adam Gaffin was taken in.
