My Take on Discussion 2 Readings

Here's the top of Hartland Patch’s Facebook page form earlier Tuesday.

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Online is sooooo different from print. And this past week working for Patch.com is reinforcing that for me, so I felt it important to relate my experiences to both chapters 3 and 4.

As a former print reporter, I'm used to writing under tight deadlines in a news article format, but that's not what I could do on Saturday when I covered the Hartland Heritage Day.

Until we launch our site, we've decided to use both Facebook and Twitter to begin the task of covering the community and build our online audience. What I've since realized is that while both are great for breaking news, each is limited if you want add more. There is an option in Facebook where you can write a note or you can comment on your own wall post to add material, but it's not as straightforward as a traditional blog or online Website. And there's no editing feature. If I make a mistake and want to correct it, I can only repost or comment about what the mistake is and why. While the latter is more transparent to readers, it could also be distracting with every last typo or unprofessional not to change a thing. So, I think it depends on the type of mistake and the story.

Still, I felt I was able to tell the story of Heritage Day on Facebook through posts of albums and comments. I published seven mini-features and one video that focused on a specific subject. For instance, the two displayed on the right each tells a story, the top one of face-painting and the bottom of an exhibit about one-room school houses. A day later, I published a small gallery of other pictures I had from the event and that's when I began to attract comments, including one that correctly pointed out that I didn't have the makes of the classic cars in one picture.

I knew when I published it that someone might ask and they did, but I enlisted the help of my dad who's a car buff to engage the user in a conversation. The site also attracted a user-generated photo from the local garden club (I actually took the picture on their behalf when I was talking with them). This type of two-way street is the strength of online, so I responded quickly. This newer type of media model (many-to-many) is a big part of Chapter 4.

And although Facebook is a private network —and a gigantic one at that — it provides the key elements discussed in Chapter 3, too: seachability, scanability, linkability and socialibility. But not everyone likes Facebook. I've already had one person who is interested in the content but explicitly tell me she would not join or go on the site. An alternative would be to also create a blog where a longer form of reporting could more easily take place. But such a blog likely would not continue after launch, so why muddy the waters more, so I'm going to stick with Facebook and Twitter.