Amanda - Quite frankly, I think that engaging with one's audience is a skill that most journalists won't have. This is probably good for you, as an "unknown," since they may not have a job soon, and you will. Thanks for the comment, and keep reading!

Amy - Anytime. You know we love you.

Hey, thanks to the link to my article about journos & geeks working together more. Yeah, if only they knew....

- Amy Gahran

Great site and thanks for the link up at the "snickered at". I love the mainstream media both here in Canada and south of the border but here in Canada so many of our journalists had their mouths closed and stories buried because of Corporate crap and so many of these corporate companies buying many media outlets so those outlets and journalists were run based on those Corporate policies. Getting the best information came down to which political party does that Corp. support. This ends up having so many important news stories the public rely on buried, good old hard nosed journalism is a rareity. I think Sheldon Chumir President of the Foundation for Ethics in Leadership when he spoke of the media in saying:

"Free and open media is a key source of such information and thus is essential to a fully functioning democratic society. This critical role endows the media with considerable power. Properly exercised, this power can promote and nurture the democratic process. Improperly exercise, it can do the reverse. " from my article http://nabweekly.ca/?p=1301.

Then you have media outlets in the States that are much like that Fox for instance, I just won't watch. I do love CNN but feel their quality of journalism has failed over the years in many aspects. I've been watching CNN for over 20 years and have seen the change. Technolgy has become a bigger focus then stories ex. the magic board...in Canada's CBC we have "the smart board" no comparison to CNN's but it's not about who has the biggest "board" but who has great journalism. I believe the CBC tops the list hands down of course the BBC still being the best out there. CBC is the only news in Canada I find with great journalism skills, the rest CTV and affiliates are just to one sided and lack in skill.

I certainly didn't mean to hit all journalists that hard but trust me, I snicker for a reason, I snicker because of the media contact I had a year ago who snickered at me for using FB (no twitter at the time) because I was over the age of 30 and it wouldn't work when it comes to the media..basically "they didn't need the help", now that's all I see...so it was my turn to snicker back. That comment it was directed at, a very famous media journalists knew I was speaking to him and he to can snicker at it and that he was wrong in the beginning, now he uses, twitter, FB, Myspace to relate and speak with his audience. I guess mainstream media should try and do a bit more research before they snicker at a "little old unknown" like myself, now not so unknown according to my massively growing number of daily stats.
Thanks for the discussion, feel free to come in and leave your storybook as I have here in Nabweekly anytime...:)