Image: Missmac/Flickr

Impressed with the buzz that Baum’s tweeting generated in journalism circles, I immediately thought about what this does for his personal brand and the personal branding lessons that journalists can learn from this exercise. I have a post exploring that very topic at Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog.

I was pretty excited to write about this because I rarely see personal branding content that is either 1) geared towards people who work in news; or 2) written from a journalists perspective. I’m thrilled to have worked with Schawbel to discuss personal branding from this perspective.

There are tons of reasons (here are some) why it’s important for everyone to give personal branding at least some consideration, but for journalists who face uncertainty with employment while the industry undergoes significant changes, personal branding can truly distinguish candidates in the job market, whether it be in the news industry or in a different area.

So what do some journalists think about Dan Baum’s use of Twitter for personal branding? Just check out my post. I’d love to hear what you think.

The site has two main goals: 1. to help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events; 2. to increase dialogue about international news and make the world smaller through conversation and interaction, both on this site and on Twitter.

The philosophy behind the site is “hyperlocal gone global.” There is an emphasis on what is happening in a specific place at a specific time and looks at how people are reacting to that event(s) in the area.

Barbara Iverson recently wrote about the site–which launched at the beginning of this year–for Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits:

[Breaking Tweets] is associated with the account Twitter.com/breakingtweets, but it takes Twitter messages to a new level. The site has just added Breaking Tweets Entertainment and Breaking Tweets Sports, and will soon add Breaking Tweets Chicago…

Breaking Tweets has human editors who manually select messages for inclusion in their stories. Furthermore, the editors treat the Tweets like quotes, weaving the 140 character missives into a comprehensive story on a news topic.From a “virtual newsroom,” the team keeps connected via e-mail and online.

Last month, BeatBlogging.org’s Lily Q interviewed BreakingTweets.com founder Craig Kanalley, a journalism grad student at DePaul University (the staff listed on the Breaking Tweet’s site mostly consists of journalism students).

Kanalley tells Lily that he first got the idea for the site after he “saw the amount of people twittering about Election Day and how Twitter can serve as a place for breaking news, very personal feelings and eyewitness accounts.”

A few more snippets from Kanalley:

Tweets are great because they are short, quick and, in many ways, they are just like quotes that journalists would often use anyway. They are instantaneous and, as a result, they work well with news in general, also across a wide geographic scope.

Breaking Tweets changes the practice because it focuses on editing the Web. There is so much clutter out there but it takes it all and seeks to make sense of it. I think a well done Breaking Tweets story can be just as valuable as a longer form traditional news story on the same subject. It gives a different glimpse into the story.

See the full interview here.

Don’t let the name fool you though, Breaking Tweets is not intended to “break the news.” In a blog post, Kanalley writes, “The point of the site I put together is to chronicle the biggest news around the world each day and put a Twitter spin on it by personalizing the news through tweets.”

But the site actually did scoop the BBC and CNN last week.  Read more about that here.

Breaking Tweets logo/BreakingTweets.com

A friend sent me this New York Times article, which summarizes a heated confrontation that took place on the HBO sports media show Costas Now. I’m not usually interested in professional sports-related topics, but this discussion got my attention.

On the show, Buzz Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights and other books let rip on Will Leitch, the founder of the sports blog Deadspin. Shortly after the show started Bissinger interjected himself into the conversation.

“I really think you’re full of shit,” he said to Leitch. Bissinger then launched into a full critique of blogging.

“I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to journalistic dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed,” Bissinger said. “Here’s insight in blogging, because it really pisses the shit out of me,” he said before reading some offensive comments he pulled from the blog.

Later in the show Leitch acknowledged that some blogs are abusive and not responsible, adding that those are not the ones that become very popular. “The nice thing about the Web is it’s a meritocracy. Sure anyone can start a blog, but to get a readership you have to be serious, you have to be consistent, it’s hard goddam work…”

The Real Disagreement

This debate isn’t new, but here’s what this particular discussion made me think about.

You get the people in Bissinger’s camp who don’t like what bloggers are doing. Like Bissinger, they say blogs are dumbing things down. Blogs are vicious, uncensored and bloggers don’t have the same accountability as journalists, which negatively affects the quality of the content, they say.

Then you get the people who think like Leitch. Perhaps bloggers aren’t accountable to editors and news organizations in the traditional sense, but they’re accountable to their readers, they say. In response to criticisms about the tone in the blogosphere, they say that the large variety of blogs cater to many different tastes, some are snarky, others aren’t, it’s a question of taste.

Leitch points out that the Internet is a meritocracy. I don’t think you can argue with that — you don’t have to read, listen or view anything online that you don’t want to. Popular blogs are widely read because people like what they’re reading. They keep coming back and sending the stuff they read to friends because they’re gaining something from the content.

The real disagreement between these two camps is over how much faith they have in readers.

Bissinger and others who espouse pro-establishment views obviously don’t trust the average person’s intelligence. If you buy what they’re saying, then almost anything that’s online — no matter how dumb, profane or poorly written — could become popular and mainstream. I mean that’s the fear, right? They’re concerned that everything that’s bad about blogging could become the modus operandi.

On the other hand, Leitch, who is a young Gen. Xer, and the rest of the pro-bloggers have absolute faith in the intelligence of readers. They’re counting on the fact that people aren’t going to keep coming back to Web sites that continually get the facts wrong or defame people to the point of disgust. They acknowledge that there will always be garbage online, but their faith in people makes them believe that the Huffington Post will always hold more authority then Perez Hilton.

As a blogger, I predictably tend to side with Leitch. Bissinger’s arguments really didn’t speak to me. During the show, they both touched on the idea that this could be a generational issue. So maybe that’s it.

Bissinger is a baby boomer and his argument about blogging dumbing us down, sounds a lot like Susan Jacoby, another boomer, who makes the same point. It could be generational, but the person who sent this to me is a millennial who strongly agrees with Bissinger and many people have pointed out that most Gen. Ys don’t read blogs.

But I do have to give Bissinger credit for one thing. Towards the end of the show, the host asked him whether his distaste for blogs arises from feeling like bloggers are threatening his job. There aren’t many journalists who deal with this honestly, but Bissinger acknowledged that bloggers make him nervous. “This guy [Leitch], whether we like it or not, is the future,” he said.

Check out the clip from the show here.