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The Editor's Log

Dell Hell: A chat

Dell's closing is a big story, right? Lots of discussion on the web.

So, having the opportunity to pose questions to the mayor of Winston-Salem would have been golden, right? What are you doing so the taxpayers aren't fleeced? Do you regret making so many commitments to Dell? Do you feel betrayed? What is the region going to do now? What's going to happen to that building? Lots of good questions that would have been fun to ask.

Still...

The Winston-Salem Journal had the mayor in for a 30+ minute live chat today. All you had to do was log in and ask him a question or make a comment.

Not counting the reporter/moderator, only three people participated and one of those was the mayor. (One of the two questioners could be this guy, who is smart and engaged.)

I'm not a big user or proponent of organized chats...and I don't normally think of going to news Web sites to have them. I agree with one of our digital gurus, Michael Grossman, who said that had the mayor talked about Dell on Twitter, he would have had a robust discussion.

You have a message you want to get out? You go to where the people are.

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Tags: Dell

Posted by John Robinson on Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 5:18 pm

What do you think?

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jlowder

October 9, 2009 - 11:41 am EDT

I was in on that "discussion" and although I didn't expect a lot of people to be there I certainly expected more than two to submit questions. I thought maybe there were a bunch of not-so-polite questions that were moderated out. You make a good point about taking the discussion to the people instead of the reverse.

BTW, I have relatives who would dispute the "smart and engaged" description.

John Robinson

October 9, 2009 - 11:44 am EDT

Thanks, Jon. I always think the best of people. :)

How did you find out about the chat?

jlowder

October 9, 2009 - 2:29 pm EDT

Believe it or not...Facebook. They posted it there and I happened to see it.

John Robinson

October 9, 2009 - 4:53 pm EDT

Good for them. I wonder if they shouldn't have conducted the whole thing there.

scharrison

October 10, 2009 - 11:57 am EDT

Jon, I'm not surprised there were only a couple of people taking part in that chat. I've been trying to piece together the mechanisms (the Journal) used to promote the thing, and it's a wonder anyone found it. There's an entry on their Facebook page at 11:23 a.m., which generated a Tweet. The time on the Tweet is 8:23 a.m., which is probably Pacific time (which is weird). But the actual link to the chat doesn't show up until a second Facebook entry 4 minutes prior to the chat, and that link sends you to the homepage of journalnow.com, where I can't find diddly about a chat. And I don't know if the upcoming chat was mentioned in their print version, but I doubt it.

If I were prone to conspiracy-theorizing (which apparently I am), it would appear as if they actually didn't want many (or any) people engaging in the chat. After reading the Facebook entry, how did you navigate to the actual chat forum? Had you chatted before, and knew how to get there?

Just for some comparisons, we (BlueNC) have done many live blogs with candidates/elected officials. These are announced often several days before the event, giving both readers and the future guests some time to formulate questions and answers. The MSM even mentioned a few of the more high profile upcoming events as well, which boosted exposure to the blog. And there were Tweets and such. The thing is, we wanted as many people as possible to know about it and take part, but, unless I'm missing something, it looks like the Journal wanted the opposite.

It's probably irrelevant to compare blogs and newspapers, but I can't help doing that.