The problem with newspapers

It is 1:07 on a Monday morning. Omaha is the scene of yet another random atrocity on the American scene.

According to a witness, an elderly couple has been murdered in Midtown, and a suspect may have barricaded himself (herself?) in the house at some point. The neighborhood is cordoned off; the city's main thoroughfare has just reopened.

Dozens of cops and the SWAT team descended on the scene. Grieving relatives show up at the police command post.

I learned little of this from the Omaha World-Herald, the city's daily newspaper. I heard something big was going on in Midtown from Facebook. Then I found a running account of the action on Twitter . . . from someone observing from across the street.

THIS IS ALL that's on the World-Herald website at the moment:

Police called to Dundee home; Two people found dead

The scene at 112 S. 50th St. where at two people were found dead is secure, Omaha police said.

Police gained entrance to the house, but the team would not say if someone is in custody.

Firefighters were first called to the home at 10:24 p.m. on the report of an unconscious person.

A SWAT team was called in and was stationed at a gas station at 50th and Dodge Streets. An Omaha Police Department mobile command center was set up oustide the home.

Dodge Street reopened about 12:45 a.m. The only street still closed is 50th Street for a one-block area.

THAT'S IT. Meanwhile, this is the eyewitness account I'm getting from Twitter (newest "tweets" are at the top):

A cop just shined a light through my window at me. Busted!
18 minutes ago from TwitterFon

A few relatives (?) are here now grieving. So so sad. They went into the huge command center vehicle.
21 minutes ago from TwitterFon

The fire truck left and now the spotlight isn't on the house. Can't see much, I think they are reopening dodge
24 minutes ago from TwitterFon

I just want to get back to work but @mrlasertron won't let me turn lights on :
26 minutes ago from TwitterFon

@gabek the whole street is blocked. Show channel 6 my tweets! :D
28 minutes ago from TwitterFon in reply to gabek

@jjsnyc across the street at 50th and dodge
29 minutes ago from TwitterFon in reply to jjsnyc

LOL a huge optimus prime " Omaha police mobile command center" just rolled in. Bigger than a Winnebago.
39 minutes ago from TwitterFon

Now a guy in a suit and gloves walked in slowly with a bug group of new officers who just arrived. No guns out now.
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon

Now they are looking in the backyard shed. I wonder if that means the gunman wasn't in the house? Sucks if he's loose!
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon

We are all safe here, the street is swarming with officers and everything is barricaded.
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon

@rahulgupta haha I could knit a badge and go check it out
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon in reply to rahulgupta

@CatRocketship what were you celebrating??!
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon in reply to CatRocketship

@rahulgupta I'm in my house!
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon in reply to rahulgupta

There are two teams of a dozen officers each. The first team entered the house through the back and I see them through the windows. Yelling.
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon

Holy s they're moving in, rifles drawn
about 1 hour ago from TwitterFon

I'm so bummed, they were a sweet couple with lots of grandchildren who always visited.
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

The gunman is barricaded inside a house and there are "at least" two deaths
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

Oh my gosh it's a double homicide
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

They have a barricade and shields!!!
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

And another car...I count 28 cops/emergency responder people
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

Wow two more cop cars just showed up. I wonder what's going on.
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

Six squad cars, a firetruck, and an ambulance with the street blocked off
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

Livetweeting 14 cops with shotguns outside my house at 50th and dodge :
about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

TECHNOLOGY has changed the game irreversibly for the news media. The only question remaining is whether the press will adapt and use the Internet -- specifically social media -- or whether it will be steamrolled by it.

In this instance, while reporters were kept behind police lines -- literally and figuratively in the dark -- an across-the-street neighbor was giving continuous updates to the world. A world better informed about a breaking-news story than were the reporters sent to cover it.

Understand the implications here: A cell phone and Twitter in the hands of a neighbor on the scene has rendered the professional media useless. The gatekeepers have been stormed and tossed aside.

Print reporters -- at least at a lot of newspapers -- just don't comprehend what good tools Twitter and Facebook are for keeping one's "ear to the ground."

WHAT'S FRUSTRATING is that a savvy editor or reporter -- upon hearing the first radio call on the police scanner -- could have started doing advanced Twitter searches and, soon enough, found what I did this morning.

"Old school," for that matter, could have worked just as well. A reporter or editor could have dragged out the newsroom's reverse phone directory and started calling neighbors to find out what they were seeing.

It's not brain surgery. But in this technological age, it is a matter of life and death.

For traditional media.

Fail the whale! Twounce the tweeters!

The economy has been murdered.

No, the butler didn't do it. It was Twitter.

THAT'S THE STARTLING conclusion from a Harvard business professor who has found an eerie correlation between skyrocketing Twitter use and nosediving American productivity figures.

Basically, when the American worker is tweeting, he isn't working. And the Harvard Business School professor, Martin Schmeldon, thinks the effects have been cataclysmic in terms of capital destruction:

Employees who might otherwise be working productively and contributing to the economy can instead create Tweets, such as "I just realized I clipped all of my nails today except for one" or "My co-worker is drinking pepsi . Pepsi!!! I want some. Stupid Lent" or "Financial systems require high levels of trust and oversight. Take away the oversight and encourage high levels of risk for personal gain."

Large companies are shifting marketing budgets over to social media marketing initiatives that promise to quadruple revenues. For example, Comcast is an active Twitter user and tweets things like "@xyz, relooking at the picture it looks to me to be the box. The reason I say that is the bar is messed up too. I would hard reboot."

"The problem is that many of the marketers at these large companies really want to have some Twitter experience on their resume, so they are subverting dollars that might actually go to positive NPV projects," comments Schmeldon. "Twitter may be the largest contributor to public company value destruction that I've seen since we moved away from mark-to-market accounting rules back in 1982."

ANOTHER EXPERT thinks Congress will have to act quickly. And that may involve conjuring up the "fail whale," which, in the Twitter universe, tells tweeters the microblogging service is offline.

Beltway insider and renowned economic advisor, West Tirrettia, believes Schmeldon's study could have some implications for economic policy that comes out of the current legislative session. "Congress has duly taken note of this research," said Tirrettia. "We may see some Twitter moratoriums coming in future stimulus bills. It's really just a question of whether lawmakers are willing to put their necks out against something that has become very popular back home in their constituencies."

INDEED, SOMETHING will have to be done. And killing Twitter might be just the start of a serious movement to save the United States' economic infrastructure.

Next up? Some foresee a federal injunction against the NCAA to ban the college-basketball championship tournament, popularly known as "March Madness." More like "GDP Madness," if you ask this observer.

Other possibilities might involve restrictions on good-looking women in the workplace, as well as the removal of sound cards from all computers where audio is not essential to the function, as well as criminalizing the surfing of porn sites during work hours.

Finally, some experts say lame-ass attempts at tomfoolery such as this post also will have to go.

DO YOU THINK tech writer Guy Kawasaki might have taken the Twitter "story" for anything but some twick or tweetery on the Internets? Then again, the way some people tweet about absolutely any fool thing -- all the time -- you do have to wonder.

Am getting up to drink some water now. Probably will pee later.

Summoning the Fail Whale

revolution_21 RT @lalorek The troubles with Twitter at SXSW Interactive http://blogs.mysanantonio.c... #sxsw (OMG . . . Has Twitter "jumped the shark"?)

San Francisco is just different

It's 4 a.m. Someone you do not know walks into your home and into the can.

What do you do?

Well, if you're a techie guru like Dave Prager and you live in San Francisco, that could be the subject of much debate and hand-wringing. All of it online, naturellement.

NO, REALLY. It must be true, it's in the Telegraph over yonder in London:

Mr. Prager, an online technology writer and web video star for internet television station Revision3, immediately posted the event onto social website Twitter.

“Maybe I should lock my door - I swear a random dude just walked into my bathroom and I can't believe I haven't freaked out.” He continued to post updates as he wondered how to react.

“I can't believe I'm tweeting about it while he is still in there.”

Mr Prager then took advice from online followers on what to do about the man in his bathroom, who he described as a combination of “hobo and drunk and sleepwalking dude.”

“Should I call the cops like you guys have recommended? Find a blunt object before opening the door? My gut tells me he's harmless."

UNBELIEVABLE. Considering that San Francisco is, well, San Francisco, you wonder whether folks there have gotten too "progressive, hip, happening, open-minded and now" to retain the instinct for self-preservation.

I wonder if the Romans had this debate when Attila the Hun was on the march? Luckily for Prager, the guy did turn out to be a more-or-less harmless, passed-out drunk. Blessedly unarmed, as Mr. Tech showed him the door.

Live on the web cam. Of course.

NOW, I WONDER how this might have played out, say, in Tejas?

Billy Bob Eustis, an oil-refinery pipefitter and deacon at the First Baptist Church of Sabine Pass, immediately interrupted his Twitter updates to sping into action.

“DAMN!" he wrote before leaving the computer. "Left the damn door unlocked. Some sumbitch done walked into the crapper. Hang on.”

The microphone in his computer's webcam streamed the sounds of gunshots to startled Internet viewers.

Mr. Eustis, back at the keyboard after a few minutes, assured his Twitter followers all was well.

"That ol' boy ain't gonna do no more home invading," he tweeted, to use the lingo of the American microblogging service. "Called T-John over at the sheriff's department. They coming right over. I'll never get that damn bathroom cleaned up. Gotta go."

Jefferson County authorities ruled the incident justifiable homicide, citing Texas' "shoot the burglar" law. Mr. Eustis, after taking a couple of days off from the refinery to clean up his damn bathroom, will receive Port Arthur's first-annual Don't Mess With Texas award in a city hall ceremony.

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: In which community is sanity closer to holding sway?

Tweet Jesus! On hold with the Red Cross

Still on hold w/ Red Cross. Music. Won't. Stop. Waterboard me instead. Make it stop! Tell Jack Bauer the nuke's in the Hill Metro station.

3 minutes ago from web


Starting over w/ Red Cross permahold. "A representative will be with you shortly." Are we talking "shortly" as in, like, geological eras? 16 minutes ago from web


57 minutes on hold with the Red Cross. Still no help for Mama, who is too damn clueless to get help for herself -- and, indeed, refuses to. 20 minutes ago from web


Please let me hold in silence! I CONFESS! I am 21st hijacker! I killed the Kennedys! I blew up the Maine! Josef Mengele was my chiropractor! 23 minutes ago from web


That . . . music. It's the Abu Ghraib of on-hold music. Make. It. Stop. PLEASE! I tell you where IED is hidden! OH NO! It's Lynndie England! 28 minutes ago from web


The Red Cross representatives are not currently assisting THIS caller. Sorry, Mama . . . at least you had a nice 85-year run. Ack! 32 minutes ago from web


I think the only Red Cross operator on disaster duty right now must be Clara Barton. A disaster-relief version of the Dead String Quartet. 34 minutes ago from web


Still on permahold w/ the Red Cross. Never want to hear cheesy synthesizers and chimes again. Make. It. Stop. AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! 37 minutes ago from web


The Red Cross disaster call center is here in Omaha. I could have walked there & knocked on the door by now. Sheesh. about 1 hour ago from web


Mama will be OK while it's cloudy & cool (relatively). But she won't help herself & she'll be in trouble w/ no power (or AC) in a day or 2. about 1 hour ago from web


Thought I was being clever in calling Red Cross at 1 a.m. On permahold. Trying to get special-needs aid for my elderly mom in Baton Rouge. about 1 hour ago from web

Overheard tonight on Twitter

I know the last place I'D want to be. . . .

If you're a woman, where's the last place on earth you'd want to be when an earthquake hit?

YEP. And where's the last place you'd want your OB/GYN to -- ahem -- be when the earthquake hit?

From Twitter:

First earthquake paper gown, legs in stirrups about 3 hours ago from mobile web

I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room! about 3 hours ago from mobile web

Good news, vagina is healthy, albeit shaken up. about 3 hours ago from mobile web

My Ob/Gyn said it was OK if I didn't want to evacuate to the parking lot in my paper gown. I was more concerned about the speculum. about 3 hours ago from mobile web

What a way to go. about 3 hours ago from mobile web

UPDATE: Is here, on CNET.

Twittering the night away . . . or something

Hey! Revolution 21 is now part of Twitter nation.

Now we can give short-and-sweet updates about what's new on the blog, or the website . . . or when the new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is available. (And the new episode IS available, you know.)

Anyway, thought you might want to know . . . and that you might want to sign up to stay closer in touch with the Revolution 21 media empire. Here's our Twitter address (registration required): http://twitter.com/Revolution_21.

As always . . . be there. Aloha.