Tripp Fenderson

A conversation on Facebook early this morning with an old friend (from my days in T.A.G. at Maybeury Elementary School) prompted a run to Krispy Kreme—a nice end to one hell of a morning.

FLOOD WATCH
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WAKEFIELD VA
1241 PM EDT SAT SEP 6 2008

We hit Cupertino’s this morning, grabbing a bagel and coffee before heading to Whole Foods to gawk at the Richmonders gawking at the food.

We do love our grocery stores around here, don’t we?

I thought it wouldn’t be that busy, what with Hanna making her way through town. I couldn’t have been more wrong (I should have checked out the former cube monkey’s blog first). The place was absolutely PACKED—every aisle, every section of the store. There were even 5 or 6 people doing tastings at the wine bar! A little rain won’t keep a Richmonder from checking out the new grocery store in town.

Yesterday, I noticed that Twitter added a link for me to “share my story”. The team at obvious.com wanted to know who I was and why I use it.

I responded telling them that I was an Incognito Anthropologist interested in Twitter for four reasons:

1. Richmond has an incredibly smart, savvy, and downright friendly group of people when it comes to all things Internet. From our projects in citizen journalism to wi-fi initiatives to the general chatter on the blogs, we’re creating meaningful connections. Twitter serves to extend and enrich those connections.

2. Many local media outlets aren’t connecting with their audience in the way they used to - or rather, the local audience wants a different kind of connection. Adopting Twitter and using it to meet the needs of their audience (a crucial point that will be missed by many media companies) adds capital to the social connection that needs to exist between local media and the informed citizen. I’m interested in following media companies using Twitter to learn more about how they use the service.

3. My Twitter feed is much more entertaining than scanning the 5000+ new posts I get in Google Reader every day.

4. Twitter lets me directly connect, in 140 characters or less, with brilliant minds around the world and that’s a beautiful thing.

Stowe Boyd, eloquent as always, has his take on the survey here:

http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2008/04/my-twitter-stor.html

Beignets with blueberry sauce and strong coffee. What a great start to the day.

A joint study from Ball State University and the University of Nevada, Reno says that newsrooms aren’t making commitments to their blogs and their efforts may be a waste of time.

The study found that “most newspaper staff-produced blogs contained a small number of postings, failed to create much interaction between the blogger and the audience and attracted few audience comments.”

Ball State journalism professor Lori Demo goes on to suggest that a reporter’s time may be better spent elsewhere. In light of the lack of audience participation, “Newspapers might consider spending staff time monitoring blogs as sources of news rather than trying to re-create the blogosphere on their Web sites.”

I don’t fully agree with the study’s findings, although it did focus primarily on political blogs.

I just talked to a co-worker, Ryan Squire, the Managing Editor at NBC-4 WCMH-TV, our NBC station in Columbus, OH. Ryan and his crew recently fired up a Twitter account for the station.

Ryan understands the value of Twitter as a communications tool for the station but he and the staff are taking it one step further by maintaining personal accounts which let you look in on the inner working of the newsroom.

Recent staff tweets include:

LaurenDiedrich: Is working on a super secret sweeps piece!
NBCSquire: Working with the desk to cover several afternoon shoots, including a cat stuck in a tree for 5 days!
Jason_WCMH: Getting details regarding a Washington County deputy that has been shot in the face with a .22 caliber rifle. Suspect is on the loose.

They’ve also received some praise on the270, a central Ohio resource site.

Channel 4 twitters! Much like the Dispatch does.

But what’s so much cooler, is that so does some of WCMH’s employees. I follow them, and it seems like I’m ease dropping a bit as to what’s on tap for the evening news. But that’s a good thing. Because they’re *building a relationship* with me (whether they know it or not). When they say they’re sending the feed of some report for editing, I want to watch it. Thus, I’m going to watch Channel 4’s newscast over the others.

Cheers to Channel 4! Now I’m off to see if the other stations are a cool as them.

Nice work Ryan!

I wonder if we’ll see any other outlets adopt Twitter soon.

Would you follow them?

I had to drive to work yesterday instead of taking the bus. Despite my best efforts to thwart the meter maids, I got a parking ticket. [grrr.]

This morning, John M. Lewis Jr., GRTC’s CEO, is laughing at me.

I made a great mistake today. I wasn’t feeling well and as a result, didn’t pay attention to what I was doing when going home.

Waiting for the bus, I sleepily looked down 9th and Broad, saw “EXPRESS” on the marquee of the oncoming GRTC bus, and thought to myself, “That’s me. The Parham Express. Bus #27.”

I hopped on, swiped my Go-Card, and got comfortable for the relaxing ride home. I even nodded off for a bit.

One little problem.

I don’t ride #27. I ride #26.

I’m riding the bus this week to evaluate my commuting options. It’s been a great experience so far and the reasons for continuing to ride are piling up fast.

* The bus is faster than driving.
* The bus is cheaper than driving.
* I don’t have to pay to park downtown.
* The bus is significantly less stressful.

Today, I got to add another bullet point to that list.

* The bus connects me with history in a way my auto commute never did.

As I boarded this morning, I noticed a small, purple seat placeholder in the front left seat with an image of Rosa Parks on it. Today, and always, that’s her seat. Had I driven this morning, I wouldn’t have thought about Rosa and her place in history.

The RTD has a note on it here. You can read more about Rosa Parks on rosaparks.org or Wikipedia.

I’m loving my GRTC.

Awesome. We’re at walmart. Doug Wilder is in front of us buying a sweet 50” RCA tv.

Now he’s helping the guys load it into his car (and being extraordinarily gracious, I might add).

Sent from my iPhone

It looks like my dry cleaner is offering a new service. I think I’ll pass though.

Maybe they’re trying to go head to head with Wing Zone, which is right next door.

(Wing Zone has decent wings by the way - and if you go, go nuclear. Trust me.)

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