The Revolution is Tweeted, Does it Matter?

There has been much ado over the last two days over the role of Twitter in reporting and spurring on the election protests in Iran. The outrage of Twitterers that cable news wasn’t covering the election swayed the MSM, particularly CNN, according to the Times.  The Revolution will be Twittered Andrew Sullivan breathlessly declared of the power of Twitter and Millennials (who actually don’t use Twitter here in the US as much as they use Facebook) to shape events and the coverage of them. And then, of course, the pushback from smart commentators, like Tom Watson, declaring quite firmly that the Revolution Won’t be Twittered! Tom warns about the “catnip” quality of Twitter for jouanlists looking to crown the little digital tool as a catalyst of revolutions. He writes:

But I think there are limits, especially when men and women are marching in streets patrolled by the troops of an absolutist religious dictatorship, facing soldiers’ guns in public and the noose behind the prison wall. Sure, Twitter (and Facebook and text messaging and blog and YouTube) can be effective information outlets for revolutionaries, but it’s utterly facile to suggest that information technology is driving the currents of unrest in Iran. I can understand the impulse, though; after all, we (the digerati, the plugged in, the Twitterverse) are watching it unfold online. And, you know, wherever we are, well, that’s where the action is.

But there are interesting lessons here, both positive and negative, that are important to highlight as we continue to learn how best to use social media during fast-paced social events. Here are a few thoughts that I hope others will continue to expand upon:

1. This weekend certainly showed that the mainstream media is listening to closely to what is being tweeted about them. In fact, that may be one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter, the fact that journalists are using it as part of their practice of finding stories, hearing from more voices and distributing their stories makes it a great vehicle for communities of people to shout loudly at them and be heard. We’ve been shouting for a while, but being heard is quite another thing.

2. To remind us that there are no silver bullets. It is so tempting to want to annoint the latest tools; Twitter this year, Facebook last year, blogs the year before, as THE catalyst for social change. There are lots of different channels on which to have lots of different conversations and no one tool or conversation creates a revolution. There is a rich stew of social media and it is the combination of them that we need to keep trying to understand and use for social change.

3.  As Jeff Jarvis pointed out this morning (via Twitter, of course!) @jeffjarvis: To a reporter today that Twitter is not news source.Source of tips & temperature & sources. Reporting follows. Twitter doesn’t replace journalism, it is a first cut, real-time stream of conversations and information, some of which is helpful, most of which is either restating the observations of other people or false rumor. But that’s what history is before it’s history, isn’t it? Just a jumble of events, conversations, observations for others to make sense.

I was thinking this morning about the remarkable juxtaposition of the twentieth anniversity of Tiananmen Square last week and the Iranian protests this week. The only thing the world knew of the Chinese protests were still photographs of incredibly brave young people protesting together, or singly standing right in front of tanks, that we saw hours later. Compare that to the real-time reporting from within Iran by brave people using whatever tools were working, cell phones before they went down, Flckr, Facebook, and Twitter, to tell the world what is happening right now. I’ll take the real-time social media stew anytime and leave it to others to figure out what’s historically important later!

Greatest Loss of 2009: Social Capital

The biggest problem with having smart friends is that they ask smart questions, and then one is obligated to try and answer; hopefully smartly, but failing that, at least pithily.

Yesterday, my friend Katya Andresen, the magnificent brains behind Katya’as Nonprofit Marketing Blog and the book Robin Hood Marketing, posed this question to me on Twitter:  @Afine one in ten arts orgs are on the brink of collapse but movie attendance up – is this a marketing problem?

Katya ws responding to a report yesterday from the AP that Bob Lynch, the President of Americans for the Arts estimated that 10,000 arts organizations will close this year, 10% of the total number.

Certainly some portion of that number are organizations that are poorly managed, or have no real base of local support so that any shaking of the apple cart sends them spiraling downward. But, still, a large percentage represents opera companies, symphonies, museums and theater companies that will be huge cultural losses to those communities, and of a course a huge and heartbreaking loss of jobs.

As Katya suggests there is definitely a business model element to the struggle of local arts organizations. Local performing arts organizations are too labor and capital intensive that makes the cost of participation for casual supporters very high in comparison to movies. It is financially impossible to make a ticket to the opera the same cost as a ticket to Slumdog Millionaire (although once you throw in the cost of popcorn and soda you are getting closer) without a significant subsidy from the government or private donors that doesn’t exist in today’s economy.

Even though the meltdown of the newspaper industry has gotten far more press (from the press, naturally!) than the collapse of local arts organizations, there are pathways that make future local news gathering and dissemination possible. The newspaper problem is a classic business model problem; the process of gathering and reading news has fundamentally changed and organizations are scrambling to catch up with newer, more efficient mechanisms for delivering news to readers. But, there is a marketplace for news as online readership continues to rise, and we are in the messy process of transitioning to a new model.

The problem of trying to figure out a new business model for arts organizations is much more difficult. This is due in part because the cost of delivering the product is largely fixed; there is no way around the fact that orchestras need violinists and cellists. Consumers of news exist in large numbers, some say even growing numbers, but many arts organizations that face the prospect that there may not be enough patrons to support their efforts — ever.  It may be that performing arts organizations cover larger regions. For instance, perhaps Hartford, CT cannot sustain a symphony orchestra, but lower New England may be able to. Or that the orchestras get smaller, or that the players aren’t full-time professionals.

Tinkering with the size and catchment area for performing arts organizations (and museums, too) misses a much a bigger problem for communities.  The loss of newspapers and arts organizations creates an enormous, perhaps irreplacable, loss of social capital for local communities.

Tom Watson really nailed this issue in a terrific post on the Huffington Post yesterday when he wrote:

As Shirky writes (correctly in my view) the casualty isn’t so much the newspaper (and the companies who operate them), as it is the journalist – and professional journalism itself. And that is a huge loss for society that no one should be welcome with glee (though some digital triumphalists cannot seem to restrain themselves)

And Tom is no luddite, he is the author of CauseWired and works every day to help organizations transition to the Connected Age.

And in a follow up email to me yesterday he made a point that has been overlooked in much of the debate:

Most ‘observers’ don’t know the scale of this disaster – we’re talking
tens of thousands of reporters at thousands of newspaper in thousands
of cities and towns and counties. A whole system of informing the
public commons is dying – blogs simply won’t replace it, citizen
journalists will be a tiny fraction of what went before. It’s truly an
American loss.

We are losing the institutional memories of institutions that are in the business of connecting individuals to one another, to their communities, to beautiful and inspiring stories and works of arts.

I’m not quite as pessimisitc as Tom about the future of local news efforts. The models that we’re discussing and testing right now may not work, but that doesn’t mean that a model for news won’t or can’t exist in the future, a model that is financially sustainable and does a credible job of informing the citizenry and keeping local institutions accountable to the public. But what I don’t know is if or how social media can make up this loss, it may simply be that this is one casualty of the Connected Age. One thing we can do is to insist that the growth of social capital be a part of the discussion and implementation of new models for news and arts organizations.

Making money isn’t the only measure of success for news and arts organizations in the future; reconnecting citizens locally to one another; regenerating the social fabric is just as important and necessary to the success of these efforts.

Administrative Costs Are Not Optional

The panel I was on yesterday at the onPhilanthropy Summit yesterday was terrific (kudos to Tom Watson for doing a great job of facilitating a lively conversation!) Near the end of the session, Charles Best, the CEO and founder of DonorsChoose.org, mentioned that the organization provides an option for donors to support administrative costs — or not — for any project they fund. Now, taking exception with DonorsChoose is akin to criticizing Santa Claus, really it’s a lovely organization providing an easy opportunity for people anywhere and of any means to support all or part of school projects and needs like pencils, books or disposal cameras in largely low-income communities. It’s a wonderful organization that has been magnificently launched and run by Charles and his colleagues — except for the fact that they make the true cost of operating DonorsChoose optional for donors.

As Charles said on the panel yesterday, transparency and openness are critical components of relationships between causes and donors. Agreed, and his organization does a wonderful job of explaining their own operating costs. Here is a paragraph from the area on their website called “Sustaining Operations”:

The price of a student project includes an optional fulfillment fee covering the work performed by DonorsChoose.org (see Fulfilling Student Projects). After clicking to fund a project, the donor may decide not to include this fulfillment fee. By choosing to include it, donors support the necessary resources—staff time, office space, and technology—to bring their chosen projects to life.

Charles said that over 80% of donors choose to provide the fee. But, the problem I have is that it shouldn’t be optional. There has been an overreaction in the nonprofit sector to critics of overhead and administrative fees (prompted by the actions of a few bad apples with excessive fees and costs) to make it appear to donors that it doesn’t actually cost anything to make good things happen. Unless we want Charles and his colleagues to stand outside on a street corner shouting to attract donors to great school projects, they actually do need staff and offices and desks and phones and email and a website to be successful. And we need to stop apologizing for it or pretending that it’s optional. DonorsChoose can be as transparent as they are about the true cost of their services while not giving 20% of its donors the option of not fully supporting their efforts.