Oral Sex, Organic Blueberries and Social Media

Members of the Social Media Club are an amazingly handsome group of people (and pretty much white). If they had an age contest, I could easily win Oldest Woman. And who said nerdy girls weren’t good looking? They are.

One thing I noticed was everyone used their skinny photo for their Twitter ID. If the camera adds 10 pounds, you guys were once super thin, and you’re not now. No, you are not.

Well trained by formative years at Disney World, everyone filled in the rows without leaving empty seats (keep moving, I don’t want to have to crawl over you), and precisely at 6:45 the program began and a sea of iPhones lit up across the room, Twitter screens at the ready.

Here’s what I learned:

Style Weekly, despite the downward trend for newspapers, is growing.

Richmond social media people turn out in bigger numbers than our D.C. counterparts.

Rachel DePompa’s Facebook page is private.

Social media, even if it’s the only communications avenue used, can draw people to an event like flies to….uh, watermelon. (This may be the true revenue stream it generates…the ability to direct attention to a product, event, person or idea.) @RVAMAG’s Ian Graham boasted of getting a massive crowd for the first Carytown New Year’s Eve at next to no expense, using social media.

Aaron Kremer filled the Andy Rooney role, despite his youthful appearance and past history writing for Brick. The Richmond Biz Sense curmudgeon does not Twitter, despite working for a completely online publication. The advantage of online-only is you can stay viable during the start-up phase without printing expenses or deadlines.

Everyone claimed they get story ideas from their Twitter and Facebook friends and followers, but then everyone conceded the same thing happened during the old email days, or even the old telephone days. Or for DePompa, the standing on the corner waiting for her live shot days.

DePompa crowed about being able to break exclusives even faster on Twitter, before the T-D got it online (muffled laughter at that), or even before her newscast aired. But then she remembered she really shouldn’t do that because Channel 6 then steals her story.

Jason Roop of Style Weekly said reporters and columnists for the Times-Dispatch should be tweeting to give the newspaper some personality. (Is that columnists with an “s,” Jason? Are you sure? I think there’s no “s” anymore.)

WWBT’s Ryan Nobles contributed the most quotable quote, that the Internet was making the world smaller, not bigger, because we were all falling into these little niche communities. (I looked around warmly at my niche community, such a handsome group of niches.)

By a slip of a pronoun, DePompa revealed that her secret City Hall source was a male. My list of suspects immediately narrowed.

How to monetize Twitter? Nobody knew.

Roop astutely noted that Richmond’s blogging community seems obsessed with food -- that any blog headlining food or a restaurant immediately rockets to the top of Most Clicked Open on RVA blogs. I might add, sexual references work, too. (Hmm, what should I call this post?)

Is journalism still ethical? (Uh, was it ever really?) With the 24-hour cable news cycle and the rise of conservative talk radio, we’ve gotten a rash (and rash is a good word) of commentary programs that put a clear political spin on everything. Ian Graham sought to warn us about the evils of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, but was almost shouted down by audience members (alcohol blood levels rising) who said “we’re not stupid!” (Maybe not us, because we’re all so good lookin’, but Rush’s callers certainly do sound like they don’t get that he’s an entertainer playing a role.)

Nobles waxed wise again with his endorsement of Twitter as a medium that provides the most results with the least investment. How long does it take to twitter a few times a day? No time! “Those not on it don’t understand it.” So true. I get weary of hearing people who have never used Twitter dismiss it, although I feel the same way about scallops.

Nobles is wise again. Appointment journalism is out the window. Despite his need for employment, we soon won’t be gathering religiously around the TV at 4, 5, 6 and 11 because we will get news on our own time schedule.

Then Andy Rooney Kremer becomes bafflingly unwise. He opines that the only future is micropayments. We will go to a system where we pay to read the news online. I just don’t see that happening, except maybe for highly technical or political websites, or for people willing to pay a subscription to watch a video feed of Rush Limbaugh sitting at his microphone like a Buddha during his broadcast. Graham calls him out on that rather forcefully, the only even slighty uncivil thing all evening. Maybe he was still smarting from his O’Reilly/Limbaugh audience smackdown.

DePompa becomes momentarily unwise, thinking newspapers will always be there because in times of Huge News, like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech massacres, we will still turn to newspapers for information and to buy them as souvenirs of a disaster. (How macabre is that?) I disagree. Newspapers by their very production schedule end up being too far behind disasters and Huge News. We go to television for that, and for the souvenirs, a nice magazine special edition holds up so much better in the attic. (I still have my John F. Kennedy Jr. memorial Newsweek edition, waiting for the prices to improve on eBay.)

Prizes are awarded to those who stayed to the end. (At home later,  I review the tweets from people who were also there and discover most of them tweeted about needing to pee.)