Second was the news summit “In Search of a New Journalism,” hosted by the MSU J-School on Monday, May 11. I had hoped to attend, but my car broke down on the highway near Jackson. Luckily they’re hosting “on demand” video from the event on their website (turn on the player, click “On Demand” at the bottom, go to “Journalism Department,” and you’ll find “Rethinking News” parts 1 and 2).

I’ll try to provide a brief synopsis of State of Play without giving away too much. Russel Crowe and Rachel McAdams play a veteran reporter and blogger (respectively) at an established D.C. newspaper (a fictionalized version of The Washington Post). A few murder cases end up connected to a political scandal, and they work together to uncover the truth of the matter.

The movie was excellent, and yet, after the fact, I can’t say that I especially liked Crowe’s character or the outcome of the story. All throughout the film, I kept thinking of a saying from my Journalism Ethics class. I don’t remember it exactly, but I can paraphrase: “Journalism is kind of like making sausage: the more you know about the process, the less appetizing the final product seems.” (Some of you may have seen me reference this in my essay about journalism published on Supraterranean in Sept 2008).

Crowe’s journalist goes way beyond what might be called ethical practices while researching and reporting the story, but for the majority of the film, his actions do seem somewhat justified. Unfortunately, it was one of those films where the last five minutes determined my opinion of the entire movie. I don’t mean that it was a let down. It has more to do with the portrayal of the journalists’ actions. I felt that they hadn’t accomplished as much as I had expected them to, or as much as the filmmakers made it out to be.

It seemed like they were trying to create a modernized version of All the President’s Men. That was a 1976 film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman that documented the reporting efforts of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in uncovering the Watergate Scandal. The real journalists were primarily responsible for Nixon’s resignation. And according to my Ethics professor, the film was responsible for the biggest wave of student enrollments in university journalism programs up to that point in time.

The main difference between SoP and AtPM, though, is that the latter was based on true events, events that had a concrete effect on and meaning to our country (and probably the world). SoP, on the other hand, is based off a British television series and — as far as I can tell — is fictional. There have been events, companies, and newspapers like the ones in the film, but that’s irrelevant to my point.

Without ruining the ending, I’ll say that the journalists do accomplish quite a bit, but not as much as I wanted them to. But that was by no fault of their own; it was (I would argue) indicative of a fundamental flaw in journalism. Metaphorically, even if the “sausage” tastes yummy, it still requires the messy butchering and grinding — and most of the time the indigestion it brings overrules the enjoyment of eating it. Literally, the personal grief, ethical dilemmas, and organizational struggles hardly ever amount to the kind of payoff that is needed. What I mean is, the “Nixons” usually get off without a resignation.

Woodward and Bernstein were the exception to the rule, and that’s why they’ve been glorified throughout the years. In reality, journalism is a very limited practice, albeit a noble one. I would argue that knowing the limitations of journalism can help one bridge beyond it (but that takes me back to Hunter Thompson’s claim that fiction is capable of being more “true” than journalism).

As this digital age progresses, journalism is undergoing a strange transfiguration. Last year the newspaper industry all but folded. Many organizations have built respectable websites, but the ad revenue isn’t always enough to be sustainable. In my opinion, these are all signs that journalism will have a non-profit future or no future at all.

Many disagree with me. Still more wonder if journalists are even necessary anymore. It’s painfully obvious that citizens using Twitter and other social media can distribute information to the public faster than any traditional media organization. This brings me back to the “New Journalism” summit. I watched the video footage, and one recurring theme (introduced by John Bebow of Mlive.com) was that the public can now handle four out of six primary functions of journalism. Regular citizens are perfectly capable of disseminating the who, what, when, and where. That leaves the why and how for journalists to handle.

Meanwhile the journalism industry is going through a panicked ego-frenzy as they try to reestablish a sense of control over their vocation. They feel that they know better than the public how to handle information. They think it’s possible to get people to pay subscription fees to get access to content, in exchange for professionalism and trustworthiness. They claim that publishing can regain its foothold if they only figure out the perfect marketing and PR strategies. They are unmistakably wrong on all those fronts.

They’re wrong, but they’re not useless or unnecessary. What it all comes down to is control. Media organizations can no longer control the flow of information, no matter how much they want to — and they want to very badly, especially the big players in the content industry like News Corp. Their ability to control, interpret, manipulate, and spread news and information was a key component of their power. Now their control has been relinquished, and (because of this and a few other main reasons) their power is draining.

What I’m getting at is bigger and more complicated than just the death of the print industry. It relates to the decentralization and dissolution of power in general. Power should never be too concentrated because it breeds corruption. And no matter how silly you think Facebook and Twitter are, the primary truth is that they are open public forums, directed, predicted, censored, and controlled by no one.

At one point in the news conference, MSU J-School professor Dave Poulson exalted the wisdom of the crowd. An opposite point could be made (in fact it has been made throughout the history of literature and philosophy), but that doesn’t discredit the idea, especially when talking about information and not opinions. His more interesting claim was that the chaos of the crowd is extremely exciting from a journalistic perspective. His reasoning was that journalists must step in to mediate the discussion and make sense of the madness — in other words, to fulfill the need for the why and how.

Poulson’s suggestion mirrors my own feeling, but while the idea is new and uncomfortable to many print traditionalists, it really suggests what journalism has always tried to be. Its primary function is to provide citizens with the information they require to be free and self-governing. Now, journalism will achieve its purpose more than ever before, and I believe we’ll all be better off because of it.

Here’s the official trailer for State of Play:

But to whichever group you belong, you may have noticed the Twitter widget situated in the right sidebar of this blog. It essentially lists all recent posts for the Supraterranean Twitter account, where I post the headlines from and links to all content from each monthly issue on the site, Supraterranean.com. It’s kind of a bare-bones approach to Twitter, but remember, I’m from category two, and I’m still finding new ways to use the site.

Those of you in category three might now be asking yourself, “What’s the point? It’s boring and useless. People just post what they’re doing at various times throughout the day. That’s not interesting. And I don’t want to share that kind of personal information on the web for everyone and their grandma to see.” Well stated, category three.

However, there’s more to it than that. I recently started working as web manager at an NPR affiliate station, and we’re finding that Twitter is extremely useful. In fact, in my four weeks on the job, I’ve almost become convinced that Twitter is drastically more useful for a media organization than for any individual. We can distribute headlines for all our news with a convenient link back to our website. Anyone following us will see these links, and they can easily keep up with the news.

They can respond to us with an @reply (now simply called a “mention”). For example, let’s say someone likes a post I put on the Supraterranean Twitter account. If they want to reply, they might post the following: “@supraterranean That was a great poem by Joe Shmoe. Thanks for being super duper.” This will show up in my reply box, but it’s a public message that remains on their page. Another cool development is called hashtags, essentially keywords denoted by a pound sign (“#”). You may have noticed that I started adding keywords to the Supraterranean posts. A poem gets keywords like #poetry and #writing. As of now, the best way to search Twitter is at Twitter Search, which will eventually be integrated into the site itself. Go there and type in the keywords I just mentioned. I bet you’ll find some content from Supraterranean.

None of this impresses you? You remain skeptical? Or, like Jack Lessenberry, the senior political analyst at Michigan Radio, you think that social media are “the real al-Qaeda plot to destroy western civilization.” But wait! There’s more! Twitter isn’t just a destination; it’s also it’s own middle man. The third-party applications and services being built around Twitter are often more interesting than the site itself. Programs like Twhirl and TweetDeck allow you to keep track of posts, replies, direct messages and more, right from your desktop. Sites like Tweetburner and Tiny.cc allow you to shorten links so that you can fit more text into Twitter’s 140-character limit. TwitPic makes it easy to share photos in Twitter. FriendFeed can aggregate all your activity on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and pretty much every other social site.

Are you still bored? Or more to the point, are you still confused? If there’s one thing I want to convince you of in this post, it’s that Twitter is a positive presence on the web. That’s because, no matter what actually happens on Twitter, it is constantly evolving based on how people use it. Hashtags evolved because people started putting the pound sign (“#”) in front of keywords, not because some company made people do it. More importantly, it’s all about sharing! It’s the single greatest method for share links that has emerged on the web so far. Yeah, Facebook has updates (and they might have even done that first), but by being tied to the rest of Facebook, those updates will never be as capable of flexing and maneuvering as Twitter updates are.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Twitter seems simple, but that’s just because we’re still thinking of more interesting ways to use it. I just heard about a small publisher in New York called Muumuu House, edited by writer/blogger Tao Lin, that purports to publish Twitter posts. I’m not joking at all. Follow this link and you’ll find “Selections From Chris Killen’s Twitter Account” (edited by Tao Lin). What’s there? One example: “2:22 AM Mar 16th my penis feels like a CD i never listen to anymore.”

My favorite use of Twitter so far is by anti-pop star Lily Allen (Twitter @lilyroseallen). She’s currently on tour in the U.S., and she’s been holding Twitter scavenger hunts for concert tickets. She arrives in a new city, posts a riddle on her Twitter account with a hint as to the ticket location, and then updates when the tickets have been discovered. I think that’s a freaking cool idea.

Even just posting on your own page and not paying attention to other people, you could come up with creative ways to use Twitter. Take still shots from your favorite movies, post them using TwitPic, but include a quote from that scene and challenge people to guess the film before clicking the image link. Track every instance of the most random keyword combinations you can think of: #seaweed #wax; #carrot #car; #dog #cake; and then Re-Tweet those posts on your own account (FYI, “RT” on Twitter means, re-tweet — essentially repeating or forwarding what someone else has already posted). Write impromptu haikus and click update.

If this blog post fails to inform or inspire, hopefully it’s because — as I already pointed out — the system is still developing. I’m convinced that it will get more and more interesting, so I’m content to take it for what it is right now. What seems like anarchy today will feel like a regular old institution a year from now, so be patient and maybe you’ll enjoy yourself.

p.s. – Feel free to follow me @ndmeador

UPDATE 4/21/09: This weekend I found someone doing something new and interesting with Twitter. They’re called “Retweet Bots.” Essentially whenever someone types a certain phrase on a Twitter update, and that certain phrase has a bot set up, the update is picked up and the author receives an automatic reply. For example, if you include the expression “Oh snap!” in your update, a retweet bot by @natefanaro will catch it and reply to you.

But that’s not the coolest part. What’s more exciting is his website, where the bots display in real time all the Twitter updates they’ve collected. You can even follow those bot accounts and see all the funny messages that come up! So it may not have any practical use (not yet anyways), but it’s still fun and creative.

I can’t even believe we’ve had six issues! Technically the six-month mark will be December 23, but that’s not too important. Anyways, the past six months haven’t seen too many changes to the look and feel of the site. It’s been more a of a long process of fine tunings. Still, I have so many plans for the site and so many ideas for improvements, but no funding — or web developer friends willing to redesign the site. Just a few of my ideas: creating a fully interactive community with profiles, tags, recommended content, cross-categorization of articles, and more.

I think Supraterranean will do just fine the way it is, but “just fine” isn’t enough for me. Anyways, I should be back to blogging in a few days, once things are cleared up over at MusicEdge. Have you joined us on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter? If not, please do! Twitter is turning out to be an especially valuable resource for sending daily updates to followers.

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