The ReportingOn Blog

As I’ve been explaining ReportingOn to journalists, bloggers, and various other brilliant thinkers and peers for the past few weeks, it has occurred to me that those unfamiliar with Twitter might be thinking of longer blog posts when I talk about the updates I hope reporters will file to the site.

The following is an excerpt from the project proposal I turned in to the San Jose State University School of Journalism and Mass Communications graduate committee back in April:

From shorthand to instant messaging to text messaging over mobile phones, the abbreviation of communication has become a human habit.

Twitter is no different. The core function of this Web service for an individual user is to provide a space for 140-character updates.

Twitter’s declared purpose is to give the user a space to update his or her “followers” on the answer to the question: “What are you doing?” However, the combination of short updates and ease of interacting directly and regularly with one another has enabled users of the service to form loose, casual networks with persons whom they otherwise may not communicate with on a direct or regular basis.

For example, an intern at a company may find himself speaking directly to a vice president in 140-character bursts. Such an interaction might be rare or difficult to coordinate in person in the corporate world, but in the casual environment of Twitter, there is little motivation to maintain hierarchical barriers to useful communication.

This low barrier to communicating with strangers who have a common interest might be the key to the success of Twitter.

ReportingOn.com would provide a similar space for journalists to briefly answer the question “What are you Reporting On?” The ease of scanning a list of these updates for interesting items contributes to the casual nature of this form of communication.

While the immediacy of the medium serves to provide quick answers to reporters on deadline, the rich metadata available in the form of date, time, location, and topical tags on each post narrows the breadth of information available to a selection of niches. This metadata creates an asynchronous pool of updates, allowing a reporter to find peers with experience on a particular beat at any time.

In this manner, ReportingOn.com will help journalists connect with each other; the site will have no hierarchy, no leader, no editor, but will function as a social network based on both rapid and asynchronous communication.