If you’ve picked up a USA Today in the past two weeks, you’ve probably noticed that the paper has been missing one crucial element—its front page.

Well, to be fair, the front page is still there, per se. It’s just hidden within the fold of a four-page Jeep ad (see image).

This marks the first time USA Today has allowed for such unorthodox advertising, but at $1 million-plus from Jeep, it seems the deal was just too tempting to pass up.

According to industry publication MediaWeek, USA Today’s senior vice president of advertising, Lee Jones, says that in the past, concerns about editorial integrity and circulation deterred the paper from selling ads of this nature. But now, market demand and the quality of the ad have eased these worries.

“I think it’ll have minimal impact on single copy sales,” Jones said. “The look and feel will be very close to the way the paper looks.”

While the ad may or may not impact newspaper sales—I’m still waiting for the figures—since when does aesthetics trump integrity? I’m not saying that USA Today is being unethical or even just a little bit naughty, but I do think that Jones is reaching when he implies that the ad is a-okay because it looks good.

The truth is that if USA Today and other papers weren’t buckling under the recession, neither they nor their parent companies would ever allow for advertising to hide vital content.

But as we all know, journalism jobs are dwindling and media companies, especially newspapers, are having to rethink their advertising strategies in order to stay afloat.

So, what do you think about USA Today’s move to sell ad space not just on, but in place of its front page? Do you think it violates their journalistic integrity? After all, how could they run a potentially negative story on Jeep if the paper is wrapped in images of the Grand Cherokee? Or—do you think that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that this will in no way influence editorial content?

Selected further reading from News-Geek.com:

• Kiyoshi Martinez: America’s Most Famous “Angry Journalist” on Our Struggling Industry
• Scared of Losing Your Job? Start Studying.

My recent Social Media Blackout experiment left me feeling all pathetic and alone, but it turns out that I’m not (alone, anyway).

Last week, University of Maryland researchers found that college students who swore off social media and texting showed signs of withdrawal similar to what drug addicts experience after quitting cold turkey. Sound familiar? Here are some highlights from their “Day Without Media” experiment:

Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their dependence on media.
“Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely. I received several phone calls that I could not answer,” wrote one student. “By 2:00 pm. I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island…. I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am.”

Students hate going without media. In their world, going without media, means going without their friends and family.
“Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.”

And here I thought I was going crazy; that my dependence on social media was a sign of some yet undiagnosed psychological problem. But if I’m nuts, then so are you. And so are America’s youth.

This week, New York’s Riverdale County School ran a two-day experiment similar to the Blackout, prohibiting middle school students from texting, IM-ing, and engaging in any kind of social media. As you might predict, the kids suffered varying levels of anxiety during the study. But they survived, and they were better for it.

Here’s an excerpt from “Encouraging the Text Generation to Rediscover Its Voice,” a New York Times article that references the experiment:

This text-free Sunday, the Riverdale students said, was unusually relaxing. They were shocked at how quickly they finished their homework, undistracted by an always-open video chat, or checking in on Facebook or responding to the hundred messages they typically get in a day. … “I had to look for things to do,” said [student] Zachary, who ended up watching a movie with his mother.

A movie? With his mother? Even for a young teen, this really shouldn’t be a last-resort activity. Family bonding should be commonplace.

When you have down time, your activities might include landscaping the yard. We did just that on Sunday.

This leads me to some of my own conclusions:

Since I ended my Blackout more than a week ago, I’ve found myself being more cautious about my social-media postings: links, photos, videos, status updates, private notes, private and public blog entries, etc. I find myself checking Facebook and Twitter a few times per day, but this is nothing compared to my previous almost constant use of these sites. I actually now set aside specific times for goofing off.

I’ve made good on my word to not use my iPhone in the car, except for important calls. (Remember that I’m the passenger, not the driver.) I can tell that this was probably my biggest vice, as I’ve seen more of this town in the past week than I have in an entire year of living here. I’m still ill about the time I wasted just waiting for pages to load.

I no longer feel a constant, nagging compulsion to check my favorite sites “simply because” the opportunity exists. Why pick up my smart phone when I can grab a book, spend more time with my husband or go for another run with the puppy? Why debate politics through my fingers with friends-of-friends when I can have rousing, in-person conversations with people I actually know?

Over the past week, I’ve found myself filled with creative energy. I’ve become even more productive at work, and have ended up with a lot more down time. (That I was so productive before the blackout still baffles me.)

We used some of this down time to landscape the yard this weekend (see image above right). I also try to use the time to read up on corporate policies for renovations, management and modifications, so now I’m not just thinking weeks ahead, but months. I hope that this will translate into greater career success.

Finally, I feel, for lack of a better term, more… alive. Life becomes very two-dimensional and gray when you’ve got your faced shoved into a computer screen all day. Any time away from the technology translates into reconnecting with people, animals, trees, society, and good old-fashioned mortal existence.

I will always be the News-Geek, the multimedia nerd who loves to create, to teach, and to connect through all kinds of new media. But even geeks need moderation. And for once, I’m ok with that.

Below is a small sampling of my recent photography, which I’ve also added to my portfolio on this site. I use a Canon 50D as well as a variety of lenses. I feel that it is imperative for all multimedia journalists to have a good understanding of photography and of what makes a picture “good” or “interesting.” Feel free to comment or to contact me directly if you would like to see additional samples of my work.

Constructive criticism and suggestions are also welcome!

I wonder if I’m the only Apple-centric new-media geek on the planet who still has a first-generation iPhone. I know that my friends in the biz often laugh at me for it, but why? Anyone who understands anything about Apple knows that the company prides itself on computability. Every time there’s a new software update for the iPhone, my three-year-old device manages to keep up with those new-fangled little 3GSs with little trouble at all. There are of course certain things a first-gen phone can’t do that a 3G/3GS can, but I haven’t really noticed anything that makes me long for the inconvenience of a hardware upgrade.

The main thing (for me, as an all-in-one new-media journalist) that older models lack is built-in video capability, but even that is changing. This past December, Qik, a company striving to bring video technology to the mobile world, released an application that turns even my first-gen’s still camera into a useful video tool.

Here’s a video I shot with Qik last month. My only complaint is that I would prefer more frames per second since these doggies are fast, but all in all, I’m quite pleased. This app makes my “classic” first-generation phone feel a bit like a 3GS light, so to speak. Obviously the 3GS, which is built for video, does a better job with it over all: The camera in general takes clearer, more vibrant photos. The video, also, is clearer and less jerky.

You can see the need for a better frame rate and quality even more so in this video I shot at a hibachi grill near my house:

The frame rate for the default Qik video resolution of 200×152 is only 15 frames per second, which is half that seen in film. Shooting anything larger will kick the rate down even further, producing a choppier shot akin to old security camera footage. That said, the application is only $0.99 and hosting is absolutely free. If money is the only obstacle between you and a shiny new 3GS with video–or if you, like me, are too lazy and attached to your older model iPhone to make the switch–you might be better off with Qik. As noted above, you won’t get the same quality or clarity, but you will get usable video.

If you’re a 3GS-less journalist or anyone else looking for a quick, on-the-fly option for raw video production, I highly recommend this program. If not, well, why are you using your cell phone to shoot to begin with?

All in all, I give Qik for the iPhone 4 out of 5 stars. It’s cheap, reliable, accessible and all-in-all a well-programmed piece of software. I’d prefer a frame rate of at least 24 FPS, but 15 isn’t terrible.

Well, as many of you know, I’m finally up for American citizenship! I’ve been in the States since I was 9, so it only took, oh, 18 years to get this far. While I’ll surely miss my shiny little green card and my Canadian passport, I’ll be thrilled to finally be able to vote in elections.

I poked around online yesterday looking for the proper N400 form, and I ended up perusing some study materials and sample questions for the citizenship test.

I find this sort of thing pretty interesting, so I thought I’d share.

The spelling is of course quite easy for a native English speaker such as myself. And if any of you born-and-raised Americans can’t ace the civics portion, I worry about you.

The sad truth–or shall I say, the sad speculation and educated guess–is that a lot of Americans wouldn’t do well on this test on the first try. How many is “a lot”? Well, that depends. Now that the questions asked are more open-ended than they used to be–with queries like “What does the Constitution do?” replacing old ones like “What is the Constitution?”–lots of news organizations are digging around to see how well various samplings of U.S. citizens perform. (Examples: Fox News; CNN–you can even try your hand at a few questions at MSNBC.)

Out of simple curiosity, I’d love to see all Americans taking the 2010 census also try their hands at the citizenship test. How well do you think our citizenry would perform on average? How well will you do if you take the MSNBC sample test?

Fair is fair: I got a 95% thanks to the question regarding which listed state was not part of the original 13 colonies.

NOTE: This MSNBC test is arguably easier than the actual U.S. citizenship test because candidates for naturalization are given questions in short-answer format as opposed to multiple choice. As such, I recommend you check out the official study materials and sample questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Web site.

Addendum: I’ve received several messages and comments from people regarding why they think many Americans would fail the citizenship test on the first go. In summary, they point out that most of the voting public is well beyond the days of elementary and high school civics and therefore shouldn’t be expected to retain historical facts and dates that do not affect them on a daily basis.

While I don’t personally think every American needs to know the number of amendments to the Constitution off the top of his or her heard, I do think other questions on the test are very important: Which branch of government declares war? Who is one of the U.S. senators from your state? Who selects new justices for the U.S. Supreme Court and what powers does the court have?

I think that every single American registered to vote should be able to answer these questions correctly–no excuses.

Well, despite the career change, I do keep my ear to the ground for new media tools. Right now, I’m interested in Stupeflix, a really simple to use audio-slide show tool that lets you create seamless videos in Flash and for YouTube in a matter of minutes.

While Stupeflix is definitely more useful for your average user than to professional journalists (to whom I strongly recommend Soundslides), I will say that Stupeflix is quite innovative: It provides a simple and speedy API to process images, sounds, and other components into videos with relatively complex visual effects (complex for a Web app, anyway). Furthermore, the API allows users to create content and applications quickly and easily for the Web as well as Apple’s iPhone.

Lastly, the interface is so clean and simple that even a Web novice would have little trouble generating content and getting it onto YouTube.

Here’s a video I made with pictures of my new puppy. All told, it took me about 10 minutes (including interruptions).

As some of you already know, my husband and I decided to leave our fast-paced careers and enter into the family business of hotels a few months ago. It was a tough decision, but ultimately a good one (at least for now). So in May, he said goodbye to software and I to professional multimedia journalism. I proved a lot to myself with NOVA and an adjunct professorship at BU being my first two jobs out of school. So why not move closer to family and do something different? It would be a new challenge for us both.

While I’m not quite ready to revamp this site into “Hotel-Geek.com,” I think I will illustrate a few of my adventures and misadventures here on this blog. If I get back into media, I’ll go back to posting about that.

And now for a story…

About two months ago, a woman with big hair and an even bigger grin came to the front desk with a check for $200. I was a little confused, so I asked her what the money was for. She responded:

“Oh, I owe you this!”

Me: “You do? Are you with a group?”

Her: “I was last year!”

So I thanked her and asked her, awkwardly, what exactly the check was for.

The woman explained that she is the spokesperson for a charitable organization catering to the Native American community in my area–her phrasing, not mine–and that last year she rented 20-ish rooms and wasn’t able to actually pay for them. Apparently the “wonderful and gracious” manager at the time said “no problem!” and allowed the woman to pay after-the-fact in little monthly increments of $200 or less.

Mind you, this was the first and only check I saw from the woman in my nearly three months here so far. (We began new ownership on March 25 and I personally arrived in early May.)

When the woman left, I looked in our database and found that someone posted artificial payments to the rooms so that the staff could check the rooms out in the system and later rent them to other guests. Great.

Today, the same woman came in–big grin and all–and asked if I would be willing to accommodate her group again this year. I said yes, but that we couldn’t accept checks as payment. Honestly, we only ever accept checks from schools and government agencies, anyway.

The woman seemed shocked–even offended. She asked, “How do you not take checks?”

I responded, in my polite and awkward way, “Well, we usually only accept them from government agencies, and considering your remaining balance from last year, I–”

Her: “Well, how do you expect us to pay then???”

Me: “I will accept cash in advance or credit.”

Her: “We don’t have credit cards! Can you at least give me a good rate?”

I told her that because she is from a charitable organization, I would be happy to give her an even better discount than our usual group rate. She rolled her eyes and said she’d be back–”maybe.” Then she left in a huff.

As far as I can tell, she still owes the hotel about $3,000.

Is it too late to get back into journalism?

[Hindsight update: It's now May 2010, and I see that media has been and forever will be my true love. I actually stopped posting about the hotel after one story. That must be some kind of record.]

Ahh, the World Wide Web. It’s a marvel of modern technology, to be sure. And like the steam engine and the jet engine before it, the Web-based search engine has allowed man to explore the vast reaches of the world around him–and the many worlds beyond.

Furthermore–ah, forget it. All I wanted to say was OMG CHECK OUT THIS CRAZY PARKING JOB OUTSIDE MY GYM!!!!12$@!~

Nice Job, Jerk Outside My Gym!

Because, why render just one handicap parking spot useless when you can screw with both?

Parking. FAIL!!!

House and Senate leaders introduced legislation yesterday that would establish a federal ban on bisphenol A (or BPA, a toxic chemical linked to heart disease and diabetes) in all food and beverage containers.

Click to view a NOVA audio slide show I conducted with BPA expert Dana Dolinoy

This move came just one day after Sunoco, a gas and chemical company, announced that it is now refusing to sell BPA-containing containers meant to store food and liquids for children younger than 3. The company told investors that it cannot be certain of the chemical compound’s safety. Playtex, Gerber and four other baby-bottle manufacturers have also announced that they will stop using BPA in bottles.

The quest to ban BPA is nothing new. San Francisco lawmakers proposed barring the product in children’s producs in 2006, and while they eventually backed down, their efforts have inspired similar proposals in California, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon. Canada banned BPA nationwide in October.

But we hear mixed messages about dangerous chemicals all the time. Sometimes, one group of scientists will tell us that something we’ve been eating/drinking/standing near will kill us, while another group encourages further exposure! Remember all of the drama surrounding the cholesterol in our eggs? And don’t even get me started on this pro-corn-syrup campaign. Suffice it to say, I think it’s misleading.

So what is it about BPA that we know makes it so harmful? Last year, I interviewed Duke University scientist Dana Dolinoy about her research on the chemical and its effects. Click the image above (or here) to watch an audio slide show I created showing what her team has found so far.

The headline says it all. My multimedia journalism student, Ashlie Anctil, is streaming live from spring break at Walt Disney World. The show begins at 3:45 p.m., EST.

Online TV Shows by Ustream

In case you haven’t heard, the members of U2 are taking cues from The Beatles these days and putting on “secret” concerts. Bono and the gang played one show last night at Davis Square’s Somerville Theatre, a mere ten-minute walk from my home and one of the tiniest non-bar venues the band could have chosen for this occasion. Were it not for the internet, I suspect the event would also have been just as “low key” as the later Beatles shows were.

Justin Meisinger, a teaching assistant for the JO540 New Media discussion section, reported on the concert for CNN’s citizen journalism service, iReport. The report (as well as an interview with Meisinger) eventually found its way to Headline News. You can watch the segment below:

Thanks to my colleague Steve Garfield for putting this video online.

A little over two months ago, I reported on the Pew Research Center’s discovery that the internet has finally overtaken newspapers as a leading news source, and how journalists disparate to keep their jobs are now willing–even eager–to learn new skills in multimedia. This new attitude toward the Web as friend (not foe) would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago when many journalists were so afraid of going multimedia, they began threatening to leave their jobs. (Just read my master’s thesis.)

But is this acceptance of the Web “too little, too late”? In 2008, nearly 16,000 newspaper journalists lost their jobs to layoffs. And so far in 2009, another 3,000 have found themselves out of work. These figures don’t even include television, radio, the struggling magazine sector, or the Internet.

I interviewed writer, public speaker, and founder of the aptly named AngryJournalist.com, Kiyoshi Martinez, last week about our struggling profession. Although Martinez has left the reporting world, he keeps up with the industry as much as he can and is currently developing a new site, Journalism.me, which currently lists the most popular topics journalists are blogging about on any given day. Here are some highlights from the interview:

Rima Chaddha Mycynek: Your brief career in journalism includes a stint as a stringer for Newsweek and as a Web editor for five Chicago-area newspapers–at once. Why did you leave the field?

Kiyoshi Martinez in Chicago, February 2008. Photo courtesy Jason Reblando

Kiyoshi Martinez: Short answer? Money. Long answer? I wanted fair financial compensation, job stability, weekends off, good benefits and a broader range of career opportunities.

RCM: Fair enough. Is that why you started AngryJournalist.com?

KM: I started AngryJournalist after reading a report from Dr. Scott Reinardy on how the burnout rate of young journalists was on the rise. Some of the responses (anonymous) were similar to either my views of the profession or those expressed by friends in the industry. I wondered how universal these thoughts were and what journalists would say if given the platform to anonymously and freely speak their mind. For a site though that hasn’t changed much and required no extra effort by me, I’m satisfied with its results. I saw this project as more or less an experiment that has overperformed my expectations.

I think a lot of people assume that I was an angry journalist. I would say it was more a “disillusioned” or “disappointed” feeling about the industry. I’m not angry now. I’m pretty content with my life, but I do empathize with friends who are still in the industry and being let down by it. I’ve known three close friends who were laid off in the past year, one was my girlfriend. Another was my roommate in [an] internship program. And the other was my bureau chief who mentored me during my [government reporting] internship in Springfield. I think what David Simon’s essay for Esquire nailed it: you can love newspapers, but “a newspaper can’t love you back.”

RCM: Do you think the journalists who visit your site are more angry than disillusioned or vice versa?

KM: I think journalists are transitioning between anger and sadness, especially as we witness more layoffs, shutdowns and general chaos in the industry. Will they quit? Honestly, I think that decision may be made for many of them soon enough.

RCM: That’s pretty ominous, but probably not inaccurate considering the 2008/2009 job-loss figures. Do you think “angry journalists” are more intent on leaving the field now, or are they doing everything they can to keep their positions?

KM: Initially, a year ago, I would’ve said that people were making these threats [to leave their jobs] because they were fed up with management and the general way these companies were being operated. Now, I think it’s shifted to survival. The industry has no financial stability or job certainty. Additionally, all these layoffs are creating a large surplus of experienced talent for the few positions remaining. Then, throw in wage freezes and reductions, hiring freezes and more work on less people. When the odds are this stacked against you, I think that’s a good reason to leave.

RCM: Do you think there’s any hope for print, which seems to be struggling the most out of all media?

KM: I’m a pessimist and realist. It’s going to get worse. There will be less jobs, fewer publications and too little innovation too late (on both business and editorial ends). Watch for more production duties (page design, creative ad services) to be outsourced to India. Expect some publications to have full-time staff replaced by freelancers paid on pageviews. More sections will be dropped from the physical product and the newshole will get smaller. Circulation will drop further, especially in this economy. And there will be fewer print ads, too. All the ad verticals newspapers built their empires on are eroding away right now: auto, real estate, classified, retail, etc.

RCM: Surely you can’t be completely pessimistic. Is there anything at all that you feel we can do to keep professional journalism alive?

KM: A “better” economy aside, the only thing that I believe can be done by news organizations is to have a huge push to innovate when it comes to online advertising and make your services and product more appealing. Don’t pursue any editorial projects that you can’t monetize. Find new revenue streams. I would also stress an emphasis on finding a way to monetize the growth of mobile broadband Internet browsing being done, but I doubt many news orgs right now have the funds to seriously become a player in that market right now, let alone last long enough to take advantage of it.

RCM: That’s a lot to ask, considering that journalistic education nationwide still seems to be focused on the us-versus-them mentality of broadcast-versus-print. I won’t get into how arcane I think that is, but I will ask you this: How can we tweak journalism education make what you suggest possible–or at the very least, to ensure that we’re not sending students out to face a bleak future of unemployment or temp work?

KM: To justify the cost of a journalism degree, it should have business courses training journalists to be entrepreneurs. You have as good a shot in being successful working for yourself as you do for the established companies. This mythical wall between editorial and business needs to come down. This willful ignorance is a huge problem.

I can’t speak for journalism programs around the country, but I think that my undergraduate classes were mostly a waste of time. All the classwork wasn’t as valuable as the experience of actually performing acts of journalism and learning skills by practicing them. This is something you can do outside of a journalism college. You can train yourself and let your peers review you online. There are plenty of free resources to learn about multimedia. However, one class that I think was valuable was media law. Knowing about libel, copyright, the First Amendment rights, etc. was essential and helpful.

One thing that I’d stress is that anyone can perform acts of journalism. Having schooling or training doesn’t matter as much anymore. What matters now is having the tools to distribute information to an audience. One of my favorite journalism-related movie scenes is from “Superman Returns” when the editor of the Daily Planet is screaming at Jimmy Olsen for getting scooped by a kid who snapped a photo of the Man of Steel with his cameraphone.

Four years of schooling, thousands of dollars of student loan debt and a piece of paper doesn’t have anything over the guy with a iPhone and a few hundred followers on Twitter.

What do you think? Is journalism (or at least the journalistic model we’re still teaching in schools) dead? Can we save our profession?

I’ve learned several surprising things in the two days since asking, “What’s so appealing about Twitter?” Among them:

1. Lots of celebrities use Twitter and if you follow enough of them, some will eventually start following you back. This is the case with Yoko Ono, who not only supposedly reads my Tweets now but who has also sent me a direct message via the site. Now, I’m almost positive she uses a third-party site to auto-contact all of her followers–but she also sent along another, more special note just for me. Being the huge Beatles fan that I am, the experience of hearing from John Lennon’s widow has left me feeling a little star-struck. I’ll admit I’m a little embarrassed by that.
   If you’re interested, you can search the Web for reliable lists of celebrity Twitterers, but some of my favorites are Shaquille O’Neal, Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson and, of course, the truly amazing John Cleese.
2. Experienced Twitterers can come up with really clever ways to say a lot while staying within the meager 140-character limit. That might not sound too impressive to some of you social-networking veterans who have mastered succinctness in your status messages, but if you’re a journalist, you’ll understand that brevity–effective brevity–is nothing less than a fine art. There is a reason they call it “the soul of wit.” Twitter even has awards for the best “short content” creators.
   There are, of course, some Twitterers who haven’t fully embraced the concept of brevity just yet. If 140 characters isn’t enough for them, they’ll just continue their message in a second, third, fourth or even fifth post. Yes, I’m looking at you, Dr. Drew.
3. Congress Tweets. And texts. And chats. And… does pretty much everything with their phones except take notes on important events? Here’s an excerpt from the The Washington Post’s article on what, exactly, our leaders were doing during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress last night:

President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.

“One doesn’t want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) announced as Obama entered the chamber.

“I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) broadcast, misspelling the name of the ailing Supreme Court justice. McCaskill could be seen applauding with BlackBerry in one hand.

“Capt Sully is here — awesome!” announced Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), spotting the US Airways pilot in the gallery.

Then there was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), in whose name this text message was sent at about the time the president spoke of the need to pull the country together: “Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour.” A few minutes later, another message came through: “Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.”

Wow. Seriously? My students pay far better attention in class! And as special as I think each and every one of their smiling faces happens to be, none of these students is ever going to have the effect on my taxes, bank account and general livelihood that Congress will.

Do we need to start confiscating their cell phones?

A few months back, I downloaded a few Twitter applications for my iPhone. Yes, more than one. I do that a lot with (free) apps since it’s the only way I can figure out which ones are right for me. When you use as many Web tools as I do (as often as I do) speed and usability become paramount.

The problem is, I never bothered using any of them. I’ve tried to get into Twitter, but micro-blogging has never really appealed to me–well, until now, anyway.

Long story short, I’ve recently come to accept two important facts of internet life:

1. Twitter isn’t the passing fad I thought it would be. To the contrary, it’s still gaining in popularity more than 2 years after its release. According to a February ‘09 report from Web traffic analysis site Compete.com, Twitter is now the third most popular social networking site behind Facebook and MySpace.
2. Twitter is a symbol how internet users are now essentially online all the time. Smart phones and WiFi have really changed where we connect, when we do it, and how often we can do it. We can both have lives and yet stay in constant connection with the Web and our peers, which is a huge shift from just a couple of years ago. Sure people still have their stereotypes: To a lot of folks, if you’re online, you must be at your computer in your mom’s basement, drinking a 2-liter Mt. Dew and arguing with strangers over which “World of Warcraft” characters are the coolest. But regardless of stereotypes, things are really changing. Look at teenagers: Even the cool kids are always texting, Facebooking, Twittering, etc.

As a self-respecting multimedia journalist, I know that I should accept Twitter as the increasingly popular tool that it is. Yet it’s that journalistic part of me that really needs to decipher what’s behind the popularity of this whole micro-blogging thing. Both Facebook and MySpace offer “status update” tools in addition to myriad cool features that Twitter doesn’t have. So why do we Twitter?

While even Twitter CEO Evan Williams can’t answer that question (as he’s stated in multiple interviews) perhaps the Times of London can. Just yesterday the Times published an article in which they asked several experts about the Twitter phenomenon. The conclusion was this: We Tweet because we have an underdeveloped sense of the self. Ouch.

From the article:

The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. ‘Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.’

‘We are the most narcissistic age ever,’ agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. ‘Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.’

For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents ‘a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.’

Those are some pretty strong accusations. But what do you think? Are those of us who Tweet or update our statuses on Facebook and MySpace narcissistic? Are we insecure? Do we need validation?

For me… I just think it’s fun. No harm, no foul. But what do you think? Are we truly just a bunch of big, fearful, attention-seeking babies?

Let me know. And while you’re at it, follow me (and my lacking sense of self) on Twitter. You can do that at right.

Kudos to Steve Garfield and my student, Nick, for this great on-the-fly chat about new media tools for journalists. Steve interviewed Nick today during the discussion section immediately following our class. You can listen to the clip right here:

Using only his cell phone, Steve had the above report and Nick’s picture online and ready to be viewed within minutes. Now it’s just six hours later, and so far more than 120 people have listened to the file.

If you’re interested in doing this kind of reporting yourself (as any self-respecting multimedia journalist should be) you should check out Utterli. With tools like this available all over the Web, there’s no excuse for any reporter with a decent cell to miss out on breaking news.

In other news, here’s my only contribution to cell-phone reporting today:

In my grocery store’s organic freezer section–right above the soy ice cream and next to the chocolate-covered frozen bananas–is the Yoghund, a yogurt treat formulated just for your dog. Yummy. Or should I say “yuppie”? (I also have a close-up shot of the text. I took both of these images with my iPhone and posted them via the iPhone WordPress application, which I once reviewed here.)