Mainstream media just can’t let it go. On Saturday morning, yes, there was one more newspaper article.  I admit I’m easily annoyed by grumpy, banal Twitter overviews devoid of any real insight – especially considering that Twitter started really hitting the mainstream media over 3 months ago and, for the most part, the same story is repeating.  Ad naseum.

Much of it, especially over the last 3 months, smacks of what Matt Thompson at Newsless.org poses here:  “are we chasing the larger story or just the latest story?” From all I’ve seen of late, the coverage has generally been cookie-cutter and superficial with an air of  “hey, everybody’s talking about this cute thing called Twitter, so here’s our obligatory Twitter story.”  And in a lot ways, it reaffirms my fear of the state of journalism – not news, not newspapers, but journalism.

Margaret Wente did create a Twitter account – on March 20 – seemingly in prep for the column which was published a mere 8 days later.  Hmmmm … about a week to experience something like Twitter, then write about it?

About a year ago, I looked into Twitter.  In retrospect, I didn’t give it enough time and soon after abandoned it, mainly because at the time I didn’t really personally know anyone that was on it.  About 6 months ago that changed, for two reasons.

One, being a member of another social media community website, there were people I interacted with who were on Twitter; I had never met them face to face, but considered their personal online personas as genuine and their professional endeavours credible.

In that same vein, the other reason relates to a conference I attended, seeing social media marketer Mitch Joel in action.  That specific conference and Mitch’s approach, philosophy and candor were a professional inspiration. Was he too on Twitter? Yes. I decided to go back, and started slowly by following the feeds of some mainstream and social media folks, as well as some others aligned to the “business” of DMS.  So, my journey began by experiencing Twitter through a professional and personal development lens.

But, something funny happened along the way.

It didn’t take long before I saw what could be only described as the “heart and soul” of Twitter:  early adopters engaging their followers and the community-at-large to participate in meaningful, actual (gasp!) real-life events:

• the Toronto “hohoto” fund-raising event for The Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank;
• the more recent “Twestival“, raising $250,000 and awareness for charity:water (more on the results here)
• the monthly “Third Tuesday Toronto” meet-ups, known as #ttt on Twitter (with the most recent one featuring Mathew Ingram of The Globe & Mail);
• the upcoming “Pay it Backward” event on April 4 in Toronto, to break the current world record of acts of kindness, with proceeds going to The Hospital for Sick Children (to read more about this event, you can visit their Facebook page here:
• and the podcamps, all the podcamps!

Podcamps are typically free sessions and mentor lounges organized around topics like social media, podcasting, blogging, etc.  Organizers, speakers, journalists, new media veterans – they all donate their time and knowledge to anyone who is interested.  The two-day, free-admission 2009 Toronto Podcamp at the Rogers Communication Centre down at Ryerson last month attracted 500 attendees. You can well imagine the dedication and time spent of Podcamp volunteers and organizers in managing such a conference.

How did I know about these events? From the people I was following, and the people they were following ….. I admit, I’m not a professionally-trained journalist; but I think it’s safe to say that 8 days on Twitter won’t give you “the story.”  As a long-time journalist, I can only assume Wente knows this too. So from that I can only believe that her column is indicative of the state of journalism: not enough research/time, superfluous/aggregated coverage at best, misleading and sloppy at worst.

Wente mentions celebrities using Twitter “as a marketing tool to create an air of faux authenticity and faux connection. They hire flacks to feed content into their Twitter streams“, and then cites the example of someone tweeting as rapper 50 Cent (50 Cent doesn’t use Twitter).  Immediately thereafter she cites the Stefanie Rengel murder trial and the “staggering volume of instant messages exchanged between the teenaged boy and girl accused of killing her.  In only four months, they called or messaged each other around 25,000 times.” To the uninitiated, the inference is clear; she must be talking about Twitter, right? No. In fact, it’s known that the 2 teenagers in question were text messaging via their phone and via MSN Messenger.

Recent exceptions in all this are some of the Globe‘s other social media efforts via Mathew Ingram and Sasha Nagy; perhaps even GlobalTV and CBC Newsworld’s introduction of Twitter “crawls” (the former beginning a few weeks ago, the latter with their Earth Hour coverage), although it’s still early days as to if these mainstream media outlets will continue to utilize Twitter to engage their audience, I’m sure Mathew and Sasha are in it for the long haul.

Suffice to say, this is the Twitter story not being told enough:  grassroots initiatives — be it charity or professional development related — instigated by individuals who are, for now, successfully using Twitter to make a difference in their lives and the lives of others.  Clearly exemplifying the “local local local” approach many mainstream media outlets simply cannot.  And, given the other story of late (laments on the death of newspapers), we could all use a little good news these days.

PS: if you are on Twitter and can embelish this post with comments on Twitter-related good news events or stories, I hope you will share them below.