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<blockquote data-quote="Thirteen Below" data-source="post: 1037731" data-attributes="member: 18006"><p>Oh, they are. I promise you; it's a certainty.</p><p></p><p>Ever look at how many users are on the forum at any given time? Right now, it's 55 - and only 3 of us are members. Who do you suppose the other 52 are?</p><p></p><p>Some are benign bots with various purposes, some are human guests, most are probably web crawlers for search engines, but a number of them are probably journalists at any given time. I couldn't guess how many, but wouldn't be shocked if it were half or more at any given time - everything from "name" reporters or columnists to bloggers to podcast guys to wannabe content creators and influencers. And even a number of spiderbots are probably media organizations.</p><p></p><p>More than a few small, barebones "news sites" actually use it as their business model - surfing social media sites to see what people who are closely connected to a subject are saying to one another about it, and then "breaking" a story a few hours before other sources have had time to gather information from conventional sources.</p><p></p><p>BuzzFeed, for example, is famous for it, and sports sites use the tool very frequently. You get sports fans talking about their team on social media, and you can learn a hell of a lot about what's going on with that team from the fans who live in that city and follow the local "buzz" closely, and many of whom actually have inside information.</p><p></p><p>That's probably why Tyni has to be so extremely cautious about what she shares here; reporters are reading her posts, and trying to guess who her source is. I know if I were still a reporter, and covered sports, <em>I</em> would be. She does an absolurtely exceptional job of drawing a line in the sand and going absolutely not one step further; she's excellent at establishing a barrier.</p><p></p><p>It's a trick I used a lot when I was covering local and state government (not politics) and community issues, including development. I'd watch the conversations between the councilmembers, state legislators, businesspeople, and their various aides and staff members, and when I found something good, I'd call some of them up and interview them. Got a lot of really good (and <em>accurate</em>) stories that way, and learned a ton about the workings of government (for better or worse).</p><p></p><p>And last.... my wife owns some websites, and one of them is a very large site focusing on politics (yech). It's one of the biggest such on the internet, and draws a lot of traffic (so she won't get rid of the damned thing), but it's a frigging cesspool. I hate it.</p><p></p><p>About 10 years ago, we had some business in Alanta, and took a couple of extra days just to enjoy the city. One of the things we did was take a half-day tour of CNN, and we were taken to an enormous room that was the size of a hockey arena - rows and rows of desks, each one with a young intern and a computer, literally hundreds of them. And every one was surfing the internet to look for new things people were talking about on social media.</p><p></p><p>At one point, I looked over an intern's shoulder and saw - our masthead! She was lurking on our site. I laughed, and nudged Amy and pointed, and she started laughing to. The tour guide asked what we found so funny, and I said "she's looking at one of our websites!"</p><p></p><p>The guide was surpised, and said, "Oh, that's your site? Let's see how manty of our people are watching it..." She stepped over to an emopty terminal, logged in, entered a couple of commands, and said, "we currently have 11 interns or reporters silent on your forum." Meaning, just reading and taking notes, not participating in any way at all. Just listening to what ordinary people are saying about whatever's happening at the moment.</p><p></p><p>The flip side of that is, we've learned that the goverment does it too (again, for better and/or worse). And they are orders of magnitude better at it than the media.</p><p></p><p>But I won't get into that, because it doesn't pertain to Packers, or even football in general. It's just sobering to see how deep their tentacles go on the net, and very few people have any reason to see it.</p><p></p><p>But the point is, yeah.... a lot of the finished articles you see in the media were at the least fleshed out by social media conversations, and in some cases inspired by them. Because the things that are really interesting to a dozen random people on a message board are often just as interesting to much, much wider audiences when presented to them.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thirteen Below, post: 1037731, member: 18006"] Oh, they are. I promise you; it's a certainty. Ever look at how many users are on the forum at any given time? Right now, it's 55 - and only 3 of us are members. Who do you suppose the other 52 are? Some are benign bots with various purposes, some are human guests, most are probably web crawlers for search engines, but a number of them are probably journalists at any given time. I couldn't guess how many, but wouldn't be shocked if it were half or more at any given time - everything from "name" reporters or columnists to bloggers to podcast guys to wannabe content creators and influencers. And even a number of spiderbots are probably media organizations. More than a few small, barebones "news sites" actually use it as their business model - surfing social media sites to see what people who are closely connected to a subject are saying to one another about it, and then "breaking" a story a few hours before other sources have had time to gather information from conventional sources. BuzzFeed, for example, is famous for it, and sports sites use the tool very frequently. You get sports fans talking about their team on social media, and you can learn a hell of a lot about what's going on with that team from the fans who live in that city and follow the local "buzz" closely, and many of whom actually have inside information. That's probably why Tyni has to be so extremely cautious about what she shares here; reporters are reading her posts, and trying to guess who her source is. I know if I were still a reporter, and covered sports, [I]I[/I] would be. She does an absolurtely exceptional job of drawing a line in the sand and going absolutely not one step further; she's excellent at establishing a barrier. It's a trick I used a lot when I was covering local and state government (not politics) and community issues, including development. I'd watch the conversations between the councilmembers, state legislators, businesspeople, and their various aides and staff members, and when I found something good, I'd call some of them up and interview them. Got a lot of really good (and [I]accurate[/I]) stories that way, and learned a ton about the workings of government (for better or worse). And last.... my wife owns some websites, and one of them is a very large site focusing on politics (yech). It's one of the biggest such on the internet, and draws a lot of traffic (so she won't get rid of the damned thing), but it's a frigging cesspool. I hate it. About 10 years ago, we had some business in Alanta, and took a couple of extra days just to enjoy the city. One of the things we did was take a half-day tour of CNN, and we were taken to an enormous room that was the size of a hockey arena - rows and rows of desks, each one with a young intern and a computer, literally hundreds of them. And every one was surfing the internet to look for new things people were talking about on social media. At one point, I looked over an intern's shoulder and saw - our masthead! She was lurking on our site. I laughed, and nudged Amy and pointed, and she started laughing to. The tour guide asked what we found so funny, and I said "she's looking at one of our websites!" The guide was surpised, and said, "Oh, that's your site? Let's see how manty of our people are watching it..." She stepped over to an emopty terminal, logged in, entered a couple of commands, and said, "we currently have 11 interns or reporters silent on your forum." Meaning, just reading and taking notes, not participating in any way at all. Just listening to what ordinary people are saying about whatever's happening at the moment. The flip side of that is, we've learned that the goverment does it too (again, for better and/or worse). And they are orders of magnitude better at it than the media. But I won't get into that, because it doesn't pertain to Packers, or even football in general. It's just sobering to see how deep their tentacles go on the net, and very few people have any reason to see it. But the point is, yeah.... a lot of the finished articles you see in the media were at the least fleshed out by social media conversations, and in some cases inspired by them. Because the things that are really interesting to a dozen random people on a message board are often just as interesting to much, much wider audiences when presented to them. [/QUOTE]
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