It’s been a weird couple days; I keep running into this talking point that “journalists won’t use Mastodon unless we incentivize engagement farming”.
Meanwhile I’m having a *great* experience here, because I use it to— I dunno— actually talk to people and form relationships?
I reject the premise that mastodon isn’t useful for reporters. I think it’s more accurate that modern news orgs use social media in purely extractive ways.
You might get more reporters that way, but you won’t like them.
I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the “service” most reporters provide on social media is entirely self-serving. A one-way firehose of signal boosting and self promotion.
“Look at me! I wrote this story. Click on it!”
And then you ask them a question, or have a correction, and nobody reads it, because Wired doesn’t care about building a community, just reaching a consumer. It’s fire and forget.
We already have a tool for that, it’s RSS. What value does reposting a link here provide?
@Haste I wasn't on Twitter before its downfall, but from what I've heard I got the impression that microblogging was a two-way street with journalists, scientists and 'common' folk.
It probably was more like you are suggesting though. But it does make me wonder if early Twitter really was less self-serving in a way.
Old journalist here. Early Twitter was really good for getting those two-way exchanges that made your reporting stronger. But that didn't last, and being in those spaces became increasingly caustic. I quit FB in 2018 and Twitter in 2021.
But even in the beginning of for-profit social media, you could feel the shift as a journalist--we were unpaid workers for all those walled gardens.
But the problem is, loads of people get their "news" on social media. Journalism is community work, and really good, independent journalism is part of the resistance. But when your community is there looking for news on the for-profit socials, it's a huge problem. Mastodon is one of the few places where people have a little more understanding of this framework and have taken some affirmative steps toward fixing it.
Perhaps it needs to be said: very few people get into journalism because it pays well. I was never paid very much. Most of us believe in the importance of this community work.
Thousands of journalists have been laid off in the past two decades. No one came to help us. But no one working in the business was surprised. The old business model doesn't work anymore. Those remaining know that. Chasing clicks is just the last few drowning men grasping at straws.
EVHaste
Erwin
Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe