Trafcom News

Oops. Don't forget to proofread

Many of us chuckle at the grocer's apostrophe ("banana's for sale") or the poorly executed handwritten sign ("Closed Sundaes"), but probably insist on a higher standard for governments and would-be governments.

When this advertising piece from Ontario's Progressive Conservatives arrived in my mailbox today, I did a double-take. Did they really forget to turn on spell-check? Who spells bureaucracies like this? Eeek.

Gee, the Ontario election may be more interesting than I thought.

For more content like this, follow me on Twitter or GooglePlus.

Has your news consumption changed?

I woke up this morning, retrieved my damp copy of the Globe and Mail from the porch, and read the ongoing coverage of violence in hockey, which covered the front page. Normally I would have driven to the Y and switched on CBC Radio One – catching part of the news report – but skipped the gym this morning out of a need to babysit my sump pump during the deluge that has turned the Greater Toronto Area into a soggy mess.

As a result, it wasn’t until I logged onto Facebook and Twitter that I learned of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  My friends and contacts were linking to mainstream news coverage, photos, videos and more. Because of the timing of the disaster, it was not in the Globe; and because of my own neurosis, I didn’t drive to the gym and hear a CBC report.

This is not the first time that social media “news” has trumped traditional news outlets for me. I remember when the plane landed on the Hudson River and transfixed us all. At the dentist’s office later that day, I remarked on it to the hygienist, who had no idea what I was talking about. The radio station blaring in the office played top hits, not news.

To me, social media not only speeds delivery of the news; it also personalizes it. After I posted a link to the New York Times article on Facebook, my friend from Tokyo, Kaz Amemiya, president of the IABC Japan chapter, commented that he was all right, but that a nuclear reactor was in danger.  Twitter friends in the U.S., Canada and Europe chimed in with reports about their relatives in Japan. Later, I learned that Google had reacted to the tsunami with a Person Finder tool.

The days when we gleaned all of our timely information from the morning paper and the six o’clock TV news are long gone. We still rely on the mainstream media for their coverage of worldwide events, but it’s our own networks that often alert us to it. Individuals on the ground then augment that coverage on Facebook and Twitter. It’s the combination of citizen journalism and traditional coverage, along with the immediacy of social media, that I find fascinating. What about you?

Twitter has changed how I watch TV

I’m not a big consumer of television. A few favourite shows capture my attention: House and Modern Family among them. Others, like Mad Men, I watch on DVD. But in the past year or so I’ve found myself compelled to tune into certain “big events” on the small screen, knowing that I can share the experience with my Twitter friends.

Last night was a case in point. We decided to watch the closing ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Normally I would not pull out my iPhone while sitting on the sofa with a loved one; it seems rather rude in an old-school way. But this was different. Halfway through the closing ceremony, around the time O Canada was being mangled by a teen pop singer, my fingers were itching. After a knowing glance from my partner, I grabbed the iPhone and checked the Twitter stream. Sure enough, it was filled with witty observations from the likes of Dave Jones (aka DoctorJones)

 
Bonnie Dean

and Jian Ghomeshi

Suddenly, there weren’t just two of us in the living room taking in the show. I felt as though we were at a neighbourhood pub, sans the drunks and the noise.  I read the tweets aloud and we laughed together. Such is TV-watching in 2010.

Has Twitter transformed YOUR TV viewing?

Are blogging and diplomacy mutually exclusive?

I’m watching this story in the news: The United Nations envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, has been writing a blog detailing the realities of peace negotiations in Darfur. Apparently, officials in Khartoum are unhappy with this transparency.

What do you think: Should diplomats blog?

How can we keep our kids safe?

I think everyone in Canada is horrified by the shooting at Dawson College in Montreal yesterday. The only “positive” seems to be that the Montreal police have improved their communications and their response in situations like this, because of lessons learned from the massacre at École Polytechnique in 1989. This time, police arrived quickly and took down the shooter without delay.

Having waved goodbye to my own daughter at a university in Quebec just a few weeks ago, I am doubly saddened. When our children leave the nest, we want them to experience the wider world on their own terms, to make mistakes, and to learn from them. School – at any grade and in any location – should be a safe place.

Now of course we’re reading all the speculation about the blog posts by the man responsible for the crime. Just a few minutes ago I heard a pundit on the radio speculating about how society could “monitor” blogs to find deranged people who might harm others. What an impossible task that would be.

One thing I’m wondering about: Supposedly his guns were registered legally. For what legal purpose would one use a semi-automatic weapon? Hunting? Self-defense?

For now Canadians can feel somewhat assured that our schools are overwhelmingly safe, compared to those in many other countries. At the same time, the frequency of these attacks in North America is on the rise and no one seems to know what do to about marginalized kids who own automatic weapons.

Spoofs: the downside of fame

If you plan to become rich, famous, or friends with a president of the United States (or any other country, for that matter), you’d better register the domain for your own first and last name – and for a blog too. If not, you may be subject to the skewering now being suffered by Harriet Miers, President Bush’s latest choice for the U.S. Supreme Court, as B.L. Ochman reports.

Citizen journalism brings us all closer

If you’re like me, you probably feel helpless in the face of the tragedy in Louisiana and Mississippi. Other than praying and donating to the American Red Cross, what can we do to alleviate the suffering of the people on the Gulf Coast?

I admire those who are taking action by keeping others informed. One of the bright spots in this disaster is the contribution of citizen journalists, who spread information (both words and pictures), to the world. My colleague Judy Gombita has alerted me to one resource in this arena,
The New Communications Blogzine, which explores various communications tools and technologies. The current issue focuses on "Hurricane Katrina and the Growing Phenomenon of Participatory Communications & Citizen Journalism." It’s worth a look.