{"id":65,"date":"2009-05-25T12:14:17","date_gmt":"2009-05-25T19:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/?p=65"},"modified":"2009-11-13T16:47:05","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T23:47:05","slug":"fishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/fishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Gone fishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Hal Newman<\/p>\n

Last evening I exchanged notes with a well-regarded television journalist \twho seemed to be actively refusing to acknowledge the importance of \tnews-on-the-net via social media as a real-world alternative to the nightly \tnewscast.<\/p>\n

\n

The discussion was surreal at best. She truly believes ‘we’ need her and her \tcolleagues to be our filter because we can’t understand the facts on our \town. ‘We’ need journalists to decipher the code for us.<\/p>\n

\n

When I mentioned that near-real-time situational awareness already exists \tvia the net her reaction was almost comical were it not so damned tragic: \tShe warned me about the dangers of too many fragmented views.<\/p>\n

\n

My friend Andrew Fielden [follow him on Twitter \t @AndrewTF<\/a>] reminds \tme on a regular basis that no one service provider can have a monopoly on \tthe sources of the data.<\/p>\n

\n

He attended last week’s Media140 gathering in London and among the many \tcomments he made afterwards was that “Twitter \titself is seen as the latest threat to the media in that it appears to allow \tpeople to go direct to the source in real time and create an instant news \tthread which require only the presence of the microblogs and linking through \tto blogs and other supporting digital elements.”<\/p>\n

\n

So what happens when the ‘great unwashed’ are unleashed and able to generate \tnews of their own making? Are there any guarantees that what they produce \twill be any less important than that which is professionally produced in a \tmulti-million dollar studio?<\/p>\n

\n

I think not. Often, I am struck by the incredibly poor job the \t‘professionals’ do at communicating a story. Last week, I read an op-ed in \tthe Washington Examiner wherein the name of a man who was sent to Syria and \ttortured because he was mistakenly suspected of being a terrorist was \treplaced by the name of a man awaiting trial for allegedly killing an \tAmerican medic in Afghanistan. Do not disturb with the facts. Professionals \tat work.<\/p>\n

\n

In emergency management, we talk about situational awareness as if it were \tthe holy grail and in many ways it is. That ability to sift through multiple \tstreams to pull the essential nuggets out on an ongoing basis is at least as \timportant as the ability to craft a compelling narrative to ensure the \tinformation can be shared effectively.<\/p>\n

\n

However, the key to gaining that type of perspective is knowing what kind of \tnuggets you need to be fishing for at that moment in time – or more \timportantly, for the next several moments in the future.<\/p>\n

\n

Retired Canadian Forces Col. Richard Moreau [now a VP with Ottawa-based \t Prolity<\/a>] teaches a \tserious ‘leadership in crisis program’ that emphasizes the need for \tintelligent awareness. According to Richard, if you don’t provide guidance \ton what you’re looking for, don’t be surprised when your intel crews come \tback excitedly proclaiming, “We’ve got cod! We’ve got cod!”<\/p>\n

\n

At some point, you’re going to have to explain to them that you were looking \tfor swordfish.<\/p>\n

\n

Which brings me back to my exchange with the television journalist. I’m not \tsure what she’s fishing for, because of course, there’s no way for the \tcollective ‘us’ to provide her with guidance on what we believe is \timportant. It was clear in the course of our brief conversation that she \tthinks she knows what we need to learn and that we would be lost without \tthese self-anointed guides. She mentioned words like ‘trust’ and \t‘credibility’ however left out key terms like ‘depth of understanding’ and \t‘real-world expertise.’<\/p>\n

\n

So, I go fishing on my own, looking for a spectacular mix of views, opinions \tand facts from which I will draw down my own intelligent situational \tawareness.<\/p>\n

\n

I don’t need a nanny journalist to ‘sort it all out’ for me every evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Hal Newman Last evening I exchanged notes with a well-regarded television journalist who seemed to be actively refusing to acknowledge the importance of news-on-the-net via social media as a real-world alternative to the nightly newscast. The discussion was surreal at best. She truly believes ‘we’ need her and her colleagues to be our filter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[15,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}