Off the Wall

Fantasyland.

When I worked in TV news, “Fantasyland” was known as the area where the Producers sat.

Listen to: Off the Wall

If you ever watched Broadcast News, then Producers are the people like Holly Hunter, who write the newscasts and guide their content. Then, you have Reporters like Albert Brooks’ character, and anchors like William Hurt’s. (And that’s how it works.) We used to say that the Producers lived in Fantasyland because they could cook up the wackiest assignments and expect you to “turn” them, because they had no real field experience.

“Why can’t you just zip over there for some video? It’s only that far away on the map!”

“I need you to find someone who raises bats to control insect populations.”

Those are actual quotes from Producers. And yes, the reporter assigned the bat story did indeed find someone. That was in the days before Facebook, Twitter and crowdsourcing. However, in the modern newsroom, social networks have become a irreplaceable, because the Producers still live in Fantasyland, and there are fewer people to track down the news. There’s also less time to do it, and in many cases increased workloads.

It also means you have hordes of journalists who are turning to tools they don’t know how to use. (You wouldn’t just hand a liberal arts major a chainsaw and tell them to get to work, would you?)

Well, in some ways we have.

Invasion of Privacy

Yesterday, I stumbled across this on my Facebook wall. The names and identities have been blurred.

My friend, a reporter, meant to send a private message to someone she thought was involved in a shooting incident. This raises several concerns.

• Is this even the right person?
• If it is, does she deserve to have her friends find out from a reporter?
• Is there an implication that this woman has done something wrong?

As it happens, this could have been much worse! This wasn’t posted on the woman’s wall; just a link to her profile on the reporter’s own wall. (Granted, allowing it to stay up 19 hours after being reminded that she could delete it is another matter…)

But ultimately, while we don’t “own” our profiles, we do carry the responsibility of a tenant. And for me, that means locking mine down so that others can’t post to it. You can no longer post things to my Wall, sorry. (Wouldn’t have helped much in the case above, but that’s merely an example of a second mistake wiping out the first.)

There are simply too many people out there who don’t know the difference between a private message and a public one. There are too many who put little thought into what they share, and who else might see it. There are too many changes in privacy settings across these networks to expect everyone to have a Master’s Degree in Profile Security. And there are too many differences in the ways in which people treat their networks, and the purposes to which they are employed.

Expecting everyone else to know what I know and to use what I use is a ticket to Fantasyland.