ASNE: Getting all aTwitter makes a difference in disaster
Steve Buttry
This column was written for the ASNE magazine The American Editor and appeared on its web site on Aug. 18, 2008.
By now, most journalists know the story about Steve Buttry: New guy comes to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to take over as editor of The Gazette on June 10. Two days later, floodwaters plunge a staff he’s barely met into the story of the year.
What they might not know is why Buttry left the American Press Institute, where he had been director of tailored programs for the past three years. Why would he move to the middle of the country to run a newspaper newsroom in the midst of a well-documented slump in the newspaper industry?
The answer, Buttry said, is that the Gazette’s owners, independent Gazette Communications, believe as he does that digital is the future, and they were willing to invest in it. “I thought it was a great opportunity to see if I could really make it work,” Buttry said.
In particular, Buttry said, he wanted to get his newsroom more involved in social networking and reader-generated content. For years at API, Buttry had been telling journalists to embrace the future and use modern tools such as digital photography and blogging to do their jobs.
“I think most editors are busy people, and they use that as an excuse for not spending much time understanding social networking,” Buttry said. “But I think social networking is closer to our future than the print edition is. So it’s worth a similar amount of time.”
He and his team got busy making it work on the morning of June 12 when the Cedar River burst its banks and thigh-deep waters surged into downtown Cedar Rapids by 9:30 a.m. Jason Kristufek, online operations manager, was among the first people Buttry met with that morning.
“Our digital future is so important,” Buttry said. “We want to connect with our community in new ways.”
Breaking news updates and photos were a given. Kristufek also got busy working on ways to get readers involved. GazetteOnline.com posted a contact form and asked for readers to share their stories from the flood. He specifically called for “random acts of kindness” – the stories journalists love to find, but might miss in the rush to cover the hard news. He asked for readers’ photos – and got 632 of them in 12 days.
This, by the way, on a site that typically has 21,000 unique visitors on a weekday. That number swelled to more than 111,000 on the first day of the flooding.
Kristufek said he and his colleagues made sure to reply when readers sent something – whether they could use it or not.
“We made sure we interacted with them,” he said. “They really want to know whether someone is going to interact with you. It validates it for the readers.”
Other online extras included text messages – 19 of them the first day, including a call at 11:30 p.m. for sandbaggers. “They ended up getting more than they needed,” Kristufek said. The newsroom posted a database asking for information about missing pets, and staff members were also busy at work on a database that would help readers who had stuff link up with readers who needed stuff.
Kristufek credits Buttry with basically getting out of the way and setting the online team loose. Buttry had suggestions, but didn’t micromanage. “It was a chance to show the new guy what you could do,” Kristufek said. “He and I talked routinely. You could definitely tell he gets the social media aspect and has good ideas.”
Buttry does indeed “get social media” because of the time he’s invested in learning it. He got a Facebook page. He’s got a LinkedIn profile. He regularly uses the micro-blogging site Twitter.
As proud as he is of this team’s performance during the Cedar Rapids flood and its aftermath, Buttry knows of a few social media tools he’d use the next time around. “There’s certainly more I would have done if I had been around for more than two days before it hit,” Buttry said.
He’d dedicate someone to dealing with social media, compiling examples of how readers were covering the disaster through blogs, photos and more. He’d do more with the Gazette’s Facebook page to help connect readers with each other and the newsroom.
He’d aggregate a feed from Twitter, letting Gazette readers see how members of the community were communicating. “A Twitter search for what people were saying about the flooding could have told an interesting, real-time story,” Buttry said.
In fact, Twitter is a great example of how Buttry had to stretch a little as a journalist. As an advocate for using modern tools and getting involved in social networking, he watched as Twitter’s popularity grew – and it got more and more press. Finally, he decided he had to force himself to get involved. “Twitter is something I truly didn’t get,” he said. “I had to try something I didn’t understand because you learn more.”
That’s a message he could easily share with his counterparts at other newspapers. “I think most editors would say we need to do more with social networking and we don’t get it enough,” he said. “Most would welcome some help.”
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