Torn between several subjects from my mental ed-cal—fighting with multiple Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter status thingies, connecting my online connections, my recent blogging exposé in Prague and yelling at my web class—I will instead take the low road and follow what scooped Dr. Death’s impending congressional run. That being? Today’s announcement that the mayor of Detroit, of which our campus’ city of Southfield is a suburb, is booked with a variety of felony charges stemming from a long-brewing political scandal.
Far be it from me to cast any stones. Pure as the driven snow, my students know me to be. What caught my eye was today’s take from Detroit Free Press and NBC columnist Mike Wendland on web coverage of the Kwame Kilpatrick fiasco. I caught his piece roughly the same time I wished I had a TV in my office. But between all the local new affiliates streaming today’s press conferences online and my trusty RadioShark, let alone my wife chiming in on my Treo, I was never without coverage.
…which got me to thinking: what about social media? How much traction did the story really gain in the blogosphere? Or on sites like Digg and Delicious? Wendland’s piece scratched the surface, but honestly, what impact would this story have on our region’s reputation when taking social media into account?
Rather than take random snapshots, I’ve decided to give this at least 24 hours since the Wayne County prosecutor’s office first broke the news at 11 a.m. this morning. I’ll dig through the inevitable trove of online metrics and see if I (and you) can’t make any sense of it from there. Meanwhile, some fast food for thought:
- As of 10 p.m. ET, nary a peep on the official City of Detroit web site.
- For that matter, why no blog from the young “hip-hop” mayor? Scandal aside, you’d think he’d be a prime candidate by now.
- No mugshots on The Smoking Gun, yet.
Feel free to weigh in. I’ll cull what numbers I can. And while I won’t be able to run Beatty v. Dupre side-by-side on Alexa, I’m sure I can nab some juicy gab off Myspace.
All in the name of higher education, of course.
I knew we hit the big time when they discussed it on Howard Stern today. Granted, it was only during the news portion at the end, they still talked about it.
One great thing about the coverage of the press conferences was the many sites with streaming video. It gave the “no TV in the office” crowd a way to see and hear the action.
Kevin: The King of all Social Media? The hits just keep on coming….
I keep meaning to rig up a pretty lil’ flat panel in my office, but SportsCenter or Super Smash Bros. would too easily fill its screen. As for streaming video, I noticed a fair amount of lag during peak live, and many of the news sites here still treat me and other Mac users like second-class netizens. Compliments to Freep, however, for streaming the mayor’s rebuttal right on their home page. I guess old media has a few new tricks up its sleeve, after all.
I too had to jump around for reliable streaming video. I started with the locals and found moderate success on WXYZ (Channel 7). After checking CNN to see if the story went national, I found they had the best video quality and reliability.
And yes, kudos to the Freep for not making us jump around yesterday.