Twitter: Out with the Old, in with the New

By Lauren Haberkorn

Illustration by Jennifer Janviere

Recently, Twitter officially announced the newest version of their website through a post on The Twitter Blog. According to company spokeswoman Carolyn Penner, “the new experience is finally real for everyone—all 160 million of you—and in six languages to boot.” She also added that for those not yet ready for the adjustment, the “old Twitter” will be also be available for the next couple weeks before the entire website changes permanently to the “new Twitter.”

Some of the new and improved features include the ease of ability to view threaded conversations, and more accessible navigation tools. Also convenient is the ability to respond to direct messages while viewing old messages sent between the user and the person they are responding to. Most notably, however, is the new support for different types of multimedia viewed over the Internet. Twitter users will no longer have to leave the site or open new windows to view live streaming videos or images—a new tool most widely used recently, when a speech by President Obama live streamed on MTV, BET, and CMT to answer Twitter-submitted questions.

It seems obvious that Twitter felt the need to launch this new version of itself considering the third party publishers that have come out with add-ons and applications for the company’s website, like PowerTwitter, TwitterBar and Twitterlicious to name a few. These applications are designed to fit specific users needs, like the Windows application MadTwitter, and Twitterrific for the Mac. Only time will tell if Twitter can keep up with all of the web developers aiming towards the same goal—to make Twitter easier and more fun for its users.

Lauren Haberkorn is a junior majoring in Corporate Communication at the Diederich College of Communication.

How the New Media Frontier is like Learning to Ride a Bike: Notes from the College Journalism Conference in NYC

By Kevin Griffin

New York cannot be described in words, but here is my best shot: New York is like riding a bike without training wheels for the first time. Once you’re there, you are not quite sure how you did it and you pray that it never ends.

And before you know it, the flight attendant is knocking you off your bike with a “Welcome to Milwaukee, and thanks for flying AirTran.”

Last month I experienced New York for the first time in my life. Me and two fellow sophomores, Marissa Evans and Alex Engler, spent three days of our fall break in NYC as part of The University of North Carolina’s “Getting Started in Business News,” college journalism conference. The conference selected 40 students nationwide through an application process, to participate in three days of newsroom tours, networking, roundtable discussions and formal job interviews. The conference showcased prominent business journalists and internship coordinators from various news outlets as well as journalism professors and students nationwide.

Now we just had to get there.

So with our years of combined experience learning to live and travel independently, Alex, Marissa and I were to leave Schroeder hall on the morning of Thursday October, 21, and by 6 pm that same day we were to end up at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism to check in to the conference.

We overcame a one hour “ground delay” in Milwaukee, an airport shuttle ride comparable to a NASCAR video game, roughly seven lucky guesses on what street we should turn on, a hotel that almost lost a reservation and a frantic rush to figure out what a metro pass was (a subway train ticket).

But we got there.

It didn’t take me long to realize that in New York, things are a lot different. Lights are brighter, buildings are bigger, people walk faster, and yes, they are much more rude, which somehow only adds to the city’s charm.

Media Ethics: Old vs. New

By Steve Byers

As I read Howard Kurtz on the battle between Keith Olbermann and NBC executives (and many of his colleagues) over Olbermann’s political donations, I was struck by the wide disparity between the ethics I was taught in the “old media” and those that prevail among so many in the “new media.”

For those not following along, Olbermann was briefly suspended by MSNBC after a web site revealed that he had donated funds to political candidates without disclosing it to his audience or his bosses. (Read Kurtz for the details of this complicated situation). To me, the ethical solution was simple: Thou shalt not donate to political campaigns. Period.

But that’s “old media” ethics. In the “new media,” guided by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel, everything everyone does is part of a political agenda, so just donating some money doesn’t count for much, especially when air time is so much more important. Promoting a candidate—or an issue—on air seems to be acceptable or even a plus, given how we in Milwaukee observe our local talk radio personalities shilling for candidates. So, although Olbermann seems to be acting like a spoiled brat, his behavior isn’t so wrong for this “new media” world.

The smudging (or erasure) of the once-bright line between advocacy and journalism has gone so far that page one advertising is being suggested for the Marquette Tribune using as justification that it’s already there for several professional newspapers. And our student editors weren’t offended.

It sure is a new media world out there.

Steve Byers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication.