My friends dragged me kicking and screaming all the way to Facebook.
First, about a month ago, I created my personal page. Then, I became somewhat intrigued by the world of social networking, its rapidity and efficiency, and decided a Times-Herald Facebook page might also be good for business.
All of us here at the Times-Herald hope you will get online and become a fan.
I read an interesting column this week regarding the Internet taking over the news business. Marc Wilson, general manager of TownNews.com, wrote in his regular commentary about newspapers that 61 percent of all original reporting comes from newspapers and-or their Web sites. Think about it. All that scoop on the information superhighway has to come from somewhere.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the data which Wilson said was collected by the Pew Research Center. Basically, Pew gave credit to the Internet as a very effective tool in delivering the news — hence Google, Yahoo and even other Web sites such as our own. But often the World Wide Web doesn’t link back to the original source of news — newspapers.
Pew reported a total of 28 percent reporting comes from television and its Web sites, while 7 percent came from radio and just 4 percent from online-only publications. I understand my colleagues in television and radio gather some local news, but it’s still usually “news” when the television crew is in small towns such as ours. Day in and day out it’s America’s local newspaper reporters doing the grunt work in most communities.
And, I could still kick myself for taking so long to jump into this Facebook escapade. I expect it to be a lively way to connect to our newspaper readers and relay information.
Long before Facebook and Twitter were household words, I remember in the early 1980s, Grandpa Stoll told us that computers were of the devil. The cyberspace in which we traveled since — wow!
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Become a fan of the newspaper by searching Washington Times-Herald on Facebook or follow us on Twitter at washtimesherald.
•Melody Brunson leads a newsroom of nine writers and page designers.
She’s fairly “old-school,” admittedly not hip, and her delay into the world of social networking isn’t the first time she was slow on the draw to be cool. She didn’t get one of those fashionable one-piece jumpsuits in the ‘80s until the fad was almost over.
