Front row again at Zanies! I hope @michaelianblack talks to us during the show like Tracy Morgan did.

When we saw Tracy Morgan (“Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock“) last month, he spent several minutes throughout his set flirting with the women at our table and making fun of the men. At the end of the night, he shook our hands and thanked us for coming to see him. It was great! The fan-celebrity interaction added immensely to our enjoyment of Morgan’s already phenomenal performance.

And so when Black came out last night, smart phone in hand, and read my Tweet to the audience, my heart began to race. He asked me to raise my hand so that he could find me, and when I did, he laid down on the stage and looked deeply into my eyes. Resting his chin on one hand, he spoke sweetly into the mic: “So whacha wanna talk about, hmm?”

I was both exhilarated and mortified.

My throat went dry, but I managed to reply, “I–I don’t know. I’m sorry!”

Black leaped up and exclaimed to the audience, “Oh, so she gets on Twitter and asks me to talk to her like Tracy Morgan did [emphasis his], but when I do she has nothing to say!”

The crowd swelled with laughter. It wasn’t so much what Black said that was funny, but more the idea that he’d broken down the fourth wall to bring a lowly fan up to his level as the show’s star.

The hilarity didn’t end there. Black called me up on stage twice during his performance, and at one point he actually left me there by myself while he went off to get me a bottled water.

So, I did what anyone in my position would do: I called the Bob Ross-looking guy at the table next to mine up to take my place.

When Black returned, he scowled at the bearded man and said, with a surprised whimper, “You’re not Rima. [Pause] You’re the ‘Joy of Painting‘ guy.” He then turned to me with mock disgust: “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Amid more laughs from the audience, Black transitioned seamlessly into some incredibly funny prepared material for his final 20 minutes on stage. And at the end of the night, people seemed to want to talk to me almost as much as they wanted to talk to him.

What a rush.

Old Spice Goes Viral

Michael Ian Black isn’t the only celebrity taking advantage of social networking.

Last month, Isaiah Mustafa, better known as the “Old Spice Guy,” surprised fans by producing more than 150 short YouTube videos in under 24 hours. Each clip beautifully mimicked Mustafa’s popular Old Spice ads, with their lofty metaphors and hilariously grandiose monologues about power, strength and abdominal perfection.

Mustafa and a team of writers, marketing gurus and tech geeks selected their favorite fan questions via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites. They then quickly put together scripts and props for Mustafa’s responses and somehow managed to produce and publish quality videos almost as quickly as fans could watch them.

The Old Spice crew even helped a fan propose to his girlfriend, as you can see in the video at right. (She said yes.)

Bridging the Gap Between Celebrities and Their Fans

I spoke to blogging pioneer and author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, Steve Garfield, earlier today about how social networking has brought celebrities and their fans closer together. Garfield, a jack of all trades when it comes to new-media tools, is by all accounts a regular guy who doesn’t regularly hobnob with A-list celebrities. But he is resourceful and, as his book title implies, he knows how to “Get Seen.” Garfield has gotten the attention of a lot of famous people, and at present keeps in regular contact with the likes of Saturday Night Live alumnus and late-night host Jimmy Fallon.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.

Q: How have sites like Twitter and Facebook influenced the ways celebrities and their fans interact?

A: Social networking has really made it easier for celebrities to communicate with their fans. In the past, celebs had to get a Web guru to create a stand-alone site and set up bulletin board systems, and things like that. It was a struggle. But now, third-party sites like Twitter allow fans to share ideas with and talk to these celebrities. And the celebrities have the opportunity to talk back without having to know the first thing about creating a Web site.

Q: Tell me about Jimmy Fallon. At first, you were just a fan of his, commenting online like other fans. Now you talk all the time, and Fallon is even a prominent interviewee in your book, Get Seen. How did that happen?

A: Jimmy Fallon is the perfect example of a celebrity who has embraced social networking. He started a video blog and I commented on it. Then he mentioned me in another video blog post. Jimmy asked for videos, and so I made a video. And then he mentioned it, and so forth. So, we got little relationship going and I met him at the Consumer Electronics Show. I got to interview him there, and the next thing you know, I had VIP tickets to see his TV show. He even invited me backstage. Now we regularly communicate back and forth over Twitter. It’s so easy to communicate this way, and I think celebrities find (or should find) these communications valuable.

In the book, I interview Jimmy Fallon and we talk about interacting with the fans. He wants to set up “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” so that he can do just that. I also interviewed Gavin Purcell, Fallon’s producer, who talks about how they are working to make the audience experience more interactive.

Q: That’s fascinating. Have you found other celebrities who are open to interacting with fans online?

A: Definitely. I was just in the Bahamas and I saw the band Tears for Fears. They put on a great show. I shot some video of them, but I was really at a loss as to where to put it because of all these recent take-down notices from record companies asking fans to not put copyrighted materials on the Web.

So, I found the lead singer Curt Smith online and I Tweeted to him asking if I could put clips of his Bahamas show on YouTube. Within minutes he tweeted back at me sure, “the more the merrier“!

That would never happen without social media.

Q: So what advice do you have to fans who want to get in touch with their favorite stars, or who want to use the power?

A: The Internet and all these new-media and social-networking tools like Twitter have leveled the playing field and made celebrities more accessible. With celebrities having millions of followers or fans, it sets the expectation that a famous person might not see your comments, but there’s also the possibility that they will. Jimmy Fallon asks for responses and reads them. Recently he asked Late Night viewers to use a specific phrase in their Tweets, and then he shared his favorite responses on the air. That kind of interaction is fun.

People who want to get their favorite celebrity to notice them really only need to reach out. Celebs are just people like the rest of us, and they often check search results for their names on Google and Twitter, just to see what people are saying. If you have something interesting to say to them or ask them, do it because they might just respond back.

Steve Garfield’s video of Tears for Fears, live at the Oracle Club Excellence at the Atlantis (Bahamas) on July 30, 2010.	Curt Smith, lead singer of Tears for Fears, was pleased with the video and elected to share it with fans via Twitter.

Tell me, readers: Have you ever met or spoken with anyone famous thanks to the Internet? Share your stories below!

It’s good to be king. Or, at least it would be if your rivals weren’t trying to assassinate you at any given opportunity. But that’s how it goes when you’re head honcho on the internet, where users can be as fickle as fashion and everyone knows it.

A few days ago, Digg founder Kevin Rose Tweeted and then quickly deleted some intriguing (though not particularly surprising) gossip:

Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon “Google Me”, very credible source

Rose hasn’t commented further on the could-be social-networking site, but his post is ironically still visible through Google’s caching feature, which has preserved the snippet for prosperity.

The Tweet has created juggernaut of rumors and speculation, and now others are coming out of the woodwork to confirm that “Google Me” is very real.

Former Facebook executive Adam D’Angelo posted the following today on his own site, Quora:

Here is what I’ve pieced together from some reliable sources:

* This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.
* They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.
* Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.
* They had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.

Now, Google has tried and failed at creating the “next big thing” in social networking a handful of times already. Buzz is useful, but who do you know who uses it? What about Wave? And Orkut…? Well, I’ve said everything I need to say about Orkut already. (See “Why EVERYONE Loves Facebook” / March 28, 2010)

That said, I don’t doubt Google’s abilities to give people what they want. They still run the best and most-used search engine on the internet, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

So what must “Google Me” do to win over Facebook’s user base?

Here’s what I think:

• Guarantee Privacy: Users will only take so many months-long privacy fiascoes before finally jumping ship. Facebook needs to accept that while people love to share, they also love the freedom to choose what they’re sharing and with whom. I understand the temptation to sell our information to advertisers, but just don’t do it. A happy user is a loyal user.
• Don’t Enforce Awkwardness: Remember the good old days before the internet when we could simply avoid the people we didn’t want to talk to? We were communications ninjas: “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have missed your call”; “Did you come by? I wasn’t home.” Now, if we don’t want to be someone’s pal anymore, we have to declare it. We must “ignore” their friend requests or, if they’re already our Facebook “friends,” we have to physically delete them. It’s all so drawn-out and dramatic. And don’t even get me started on the concept of “frenemies.” (See “My Social Media Blackout: Confessions of an Addict” / April 18, 2010)

  If Google can create connection tiers (acquaintances, coworkers, friends, family, etc.) and make it easy to create privacy settings specific to these different groups, I’ll be the first to sign up. Sure, you can do this through Facebook to some degree via “friends lists,” but the feature can be difficult to use. Plus, because Facebook calls everyone a “friend,” someone you barely know might be offended when they realize you’ve hidden your wall from them. It’s not particularly logical, but it’s true.

  At least with tiered connections, you’ll have the chance to set your boundaries with people from the beginning.

• Don’t Be Creepy: If I want to connect with my junior-high band director’s uncle’s neighbor, I’ll find him myself. Don’t get all creepy on me and search through my connections’ connections’ connections for people I probably have no desire to “friend.”

  Don’t get me wrong: This recommended friends thing is a great idea on paper. But at the very least, give me the option to disable it if I don’t like it.

That’s it from me for now. What do you guys think?

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.

It’s actually not this simple.

I took the challenge a step further and did away with unnecessary Web surfing altogether. I even banned myself from using my iPhone for checking e-mail in the car. (I couldn’t get rid of e-mail completely as I needed it for work.) Since my husband, Steve, does all of the driving, I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where I could spend entire car rides playing with my phone.

I decided to chronicle my experiences as an internet luddite. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about myself in the process:

Day 1
8:57 a.m. – We’re in the car on the way to work and my fingers are twitching like I’m some sort of addict. (And maybe I am.) This is prime e-mail-checking time and my hands don’t know what to do with their new-found freedom from iPhone enslavement.

Suddenly, I realize I haven’t Tweeted about the blackout experiment, so I start digging through my purse. How can such a small bag be so cavernous? Finally, I find my phone and start typing as fast as I can. Like Indiana Jones grabbing his hat before the stone door shut forever in Temple of Doom, I manage to get my Tweet in before my 9 a.m. cut off. It’s going to be a long 48 hours.

11:02 a.m. – It’s been a busy morning, but I’m back at my desk now. I’m starting to realize just how much of my typical day is spent goofing off online, and it’s kind of scary. So how on Earth do I manage to stay so productive? I have no idea. I just know that I’ve been plugged into the Internet since I was 14–that’s half of my life–and it didn’t prevent me from graduating college with high honors, researching/writing a 153-page masters thesis in less than a year, or gaining some pretty successful career opportunities at NOVA Online and Boston University.

I’m not even bored right now and I definitely have work to do, yet the compulsion to “just check” all of my different sites of interest hits me every time I sit down. In a split-second, my mind thinks “Let’s go to Facebook–wait, I can’t do that; Twitter! Nope, can’t do that either; Flickr! Sorry, not happening…” etc.

My phone is ringing. Saved by the bell.

12:16 p.m.. – It’s almost lunchtime now, and one of my clerks is standing at my door, going over this morning’s crazy events. (At our hotel, every morning is sprinkled with a touch of crazy.) I look up at her as she talks, neither of us realizing that I’m absentmindedly typing “facebook.com” into Firefox’s address bar. I get as far as entering in my password before I notice what I’m doing.

What’s wrong with me?

I exit the browser as a guilty feeling builds in the pit of my stomach. That was close.

For the record, I do realize how absurd this sounds.

2:05 p.m. – I notice that every time I sit down to get a little computer work done, my cursor drifts toward the Firefox icon. It’s happened at least 10 times today already–probably more. I’ve actually stopped counting.

Steve shot this with my iPhone. I fully admit that in a moment of weakness, I asked him to upload it to his Facebook account. He declined.

I’m beginning to see that my problem isn’t really the conscious desire to connect with people, but something more deeply ingrained in who I’ve become. I’ve spent most of my formative years online. The compulsion to surf is like muscle memory, hardly any different from walking around without realizing on any conscious level that I’ve even stood up.

I’ve been following the same internet routine for 14 years. The sites have changed, but the habits remain the same. I wonder if I’m now hardwired to be a geek.

3:42 p.m. – My subconscious is getting clever. I’ve had a little bit of down time this afternoon and without realizing it, I’ve been taking actions that, if completed, would require me to log into Facebook. About 20 minutes ago, I started thinking to myself, “I’ve got some time–why not experiment with some potentially useful code for my blog?”

It just so happens that I’ve been planning on implementing Facebook Connect features that would allow people to comment on News-Geek via their Facbook accounts. This would prevent users from having to go through the hoops of registering or retyping all of their personal information to post to this site. It’s all about convenience, right?

Wrong. Well, sort of. It’s partially about convenience, but today it’s also about having an excuse to log into Facebook. I can’t implement this feature without getting an application programing interface (API) key, a unique Facebook-generated identifier that will allow users to interact with my site. I’ll have to play with this functionality another time.

5:45 p.m. – It’s after work and we’re running errands. I still don’t miss my social networking sites, but I do find myself thinking about them frequently. Every time I get into the car, I have to remind myself to not reach for my phone. So, I stare out the window–and wow, it looks like there’s a new tattoo/massage/goth attire/head shop just outside the really nice part of town. How the hell did that get there? And when?

I thought that being plugged in kept me informed, in the know, aware–and it does. It keeps me in touch in the world. But what about my own backyard?

6:28 p.m. – I cooked with quinoa for the first time tonight. I have the urge to take a picture of the tasty meal with my phone and to Tweet it, but only as a passing thought. Current realization: I am incredibly lame.

9:45 p.m. – I’ve enjoyed a nice, quiet evening with Steve and our puppy, Herbie. I’m grateful because I’ve learned I’m not so attached to the internet that these nights aren’t common. In fact, it really feels like any other night, only I’m not mindlessly playing with my iPhone every few minutes. For the first time today, I don’t feel like an addict.

Day 2
6:00 a.m. – We’re going into Nashville today and I don’t want to get up. My usual morning ritual begins with my alarm, followed by at least 15 minutes of Web-surfing via my phone as I wipe the sleep from my eyes with my free hand. Unfortunately, staring at the ceiling doesn’t have quite the same waking effect. I begin wonder how impractical it would be to get a coffee maker for my nightstand.

6:45 a.m. – It’s hard to disconnect when so many aspects of your real life and social-media life are intertwined. I haven’t given up e-mail because I have a lot of work information saved in messages and drafts.

I notice that there’s a “3″ beside the Google Buzz link underneath where it says “Inbox.” That’s way too convenient. I don’t click on “Buzz,” though, because it’s the Valhalla of social networking. It all too easily aggregates your activity on sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr, and shares it with other Buzz’ers (and vice versa).

When did we all go meta? And why?

I understand the need to reach our entire potential audience, but no one cares (or should care) enough about what I say to be willing to read the phrase “I just had my first glass of soy milk since leaving Boston” three times across three different sites.

1:30 p.m. – I see an NRA poster that reads “Insure Your Gun Rights!” I cringe. My inner grammar Nazi wants to take a picture with my phone and upload it to Facebook along with some sort of snarky “fail” caption.

Once again, it’s more reflex than desire. I realize how obnoxious it is to nitpick a poster. I don’t even dislike the NRA or disagree with a lot of what their less paranoid members stand for. I find out later that insure/ensure faux pas wasn’t a one-time mistake. They’ve got the phrase all over some reading materials and this Web site.

I twitch a little.

I wonder: In an addiction scenario, would my iPhone be the dealer or just an enabler?

4:42 p.m. – It’s a long drive home, and in between conversations with my husband, I wonder what my frenemies are up to. (A frenemy is someone who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy. I argue that in the social-networking world, the term should extend to rivals who maintain a continued interest in one’s life or vice versa, regardless of whether the two parties even speak. Online, you don’t have to talk to someone to legally and secretly keep tabs on them.)

We are the millennial generation, sometimes called the “net” generation. I believe that we all passively stalk people from our past, simply because we can. The only difference between us and creepsters with restraining orders against them is our motivation. While conventional “stalkers” are driven by obsession and a side of chemical imbalance, we’re just curious. Any malicious intent on our part could be likened to what you might feel during a class reunion: We want to ensure that we’re happier and more successful than our frenemies, and we want to see if they’re as lame/sketchy/weird/mean as they were when we still spoke to them.

In the interest of full, embarrassing disclosure, I admit that I have a couple of frenemies I check up on every few months. I know for a fact that many of my friends, acquaintances, former students and employees do the same.

I’m fairly certain that this is why the various social-networking sites won’t add a “see who’s looking at your profile” feature. Can you imagine the drama that would ensue if you suddenly learned that your proctologist, who isn’t even your Facebook friend, looks at your account more than your wife does?

10:30 p.m. – I’ve enjoyed another great evening in with Steve and Herbie. I don’t really want to go online at this point.

Day 3
7:24 a.m. – I wake up with the realization that this hiatus is almost over. I feel guilty, like I really shouldn’t go back to life as I knew it two days ago. If you do the math, a minute here and a minute there can add up to hours wasted online.

I want to keep fasting, but I also want to publish this post and share it across my various social-networking accounts. I want to connect with others out there who can relate to me and to this entry.

I’ll compromise: I will go back to my sites, but I’ll limit my use. There will be no more idle surfing in the car, and conversations with real, physical people will have to trump internet usage altogether. This means that if I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I will not grab my iPhone at any point as we wait for our meal.

12:55 p.m. – I’m publishing this blog entry. I haven’t been to Facebook or Twitter yet. I suspect I’ll have a lot to catch up on, but I think I’ll have some lunch and pick up around the house first.

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?

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.

If I gave you a chart showing what Twitter users tweeted about during the Super Bowl, what would you learn? That Cardinals fans were talking about the Cardinals and Steelers fans about the Steelers? That “Springsteen” overtook both teams as the most commonly tweeted word during halftime?

Americans Twittered all through the Super Bowl Sunday night

If you don’t know what I mean, visit the New York Times’ Web site and check out their Super Bowl Twitter map and time line. They’ve really got the “Show. Don’t tell” mantra down. Try clicking the links at left (emoticons, ad talk, etc.), hit “play” on the time line, and then take note of how much you’ve learned in how little time.

Thanks to Steve Garfield for pointing me toward this link.