Aram Zucker-Scharff

First there was this: Washington Post Twitter account suggests you buy paper instead of reading Twitter

Now this afternoon one eagle-eyed guy spotted this tweet where someone managed to screw up copy-pasting the exact headline of a Campus Overload article.

I know Twitter is fast and exciting, but double-checking before posting (or thinking, in the first case) would seem a requirement for someone employed as a journalist and to run the Twitter account.

I wish this was it, but then there is Trove, which I’ve previously noted as awful, and has fallen immediately off the radar.

Then there’s the time they passed on an article about their own journalist being an illegal immigrant.

Oh and of course there is their front page redesign, which is way better than it used to be but still has so much room for improvement. Not that they are the only news organization with an ugly front page.

Further back, there’s that time they tried the video podcasting thing. It put them so off the concept that I don’t think they’ve tried any editorial video since. In fact, I don’t think they do any of their own videos.

I’m not even going to go into how terrible their ‘live chats’ are.

I’d really like to see WaPo to succeed, but come on folks… this stuff is just embarrassing. It feels like they are flailing around trying to find something that works. Be less afraid to experiment and more focused in those experiments. You have to get it together.

First there was this: Washington Post Twitter account suggests you buy paper instead of reading Twitter

Now this afternoon one eagle-eyed guy spotted this tweet where someone managed to screw up copy-pasting the exact headline of a Campus Overload article.

I know Twitter is fast and exciting, but double-checking before posting (or thinking, in the first case) would seem a requirement for someone employed as a journalist and to run the Twitter account.

I wish this was it, but then there is Trove, which I’ve previously noted as awful, and has fallen immediately off the radar.

Then there’s the time they passed on an article about their own journalist being an illegal immigrant.

Oh and of course there is their front page redesign, which is way better than it used to be but still has so much room for improvement. Not that they are the only news organization with an ugly front page.

Further back, there’s that time they tried the video podcasting thing. It put them so off the concept that I don’t think they’ve tried any editorial video since. In fact, I don’t think they do any of their own videos.

I’m not even going to go into how terrible their ‘live chats’ are.

I’d really like to see WaPo to succeed, but come on folks… this stuff is just embarrassing. It feels like they are flailing around trying to find something that works. Be less afraid to experiment and more focused in those experiments. You have to get it together.

So I upgraded the ole personal blog, which means it’s secure now? I guess. I’m thinking of coming back around, modifying the theme some more and actually using it.

The problem is that my Facebook posts have become these monstrous things, weird huge paragraphs of content that I suspect people don’t really care about too much. When I was playing with Memolane and saw all of my posts on Facebook all the way back to the first day I started doing things on the site, I sort of got a better grasp on the solidity of the site and started using it differently.

But I have gotten complaints and I try to listen to my detractors, so I figured I should find somewhere to put the huge paragraphs, random links and weird long posts that was not Facebook. The thing I instantly thought of was Tumblr. Because hey, all the cool kids are on that.

So I looked into it again and I came out of it with two things.

1. While you can create something of value on Tumblr, I think that the social network, which feels like a weird graft of your Twitter network onto a WordPress site, is essentially valueless. I don’t see myself wanting to log in to a blog just to find another way to read some particular feeds dedicated to funny things and possibly repost that when Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter do all of those things better and with more content.

2. I remain distinctly uncomfortable with the fact that to ‘tumbl’ I have to log on to Tumblr and I am reliant on their site to host my content. I know this is sort of hypocritical, considering I’m talking about all my posting on Twitter and Facebook, but for some reason Tumblr in particular makes me distrust it. I think it’s because I ‘update’ Facebook and Twitter, but I ‘post’ to Tumblr. If I’m going to open myself to the possibility of creating content greater than 500 characters, I’d really like to do it on my own terms.

So perhaps I’ll do the Tumblr thing, but here instead.

Also Textpattern’s code is sort of fascinating to me. I wonder where HTML5 is going to take it or if it will be left behind as part of a sort of XML revolution that never was.

Oh hey, it is now dark, I can walk home and possibly not get heatstroke. Good stuff.

So I upgraded the ole personal blog, which means it’s secure now? I guess. I’m thinking of coming back around, modifying the theme some more and actually using it.

The problem is that my Facebook posts have become these monstrous things, weird huge paragraphs of content that I suspect people don’t really care about too much. When I was playing with Memolane and saw all of my posts on Facebook all the way back to the first day I started doing things on the site, I sort of got a better grasp on the solidity of the site and started using it differently.

But I have gotten complaints and I try to listen to my detractors, so I figured I should find somewhere to put the huge paragraphs, random links and weird long posts that was not Facebook. The thing I instantly thought of was Tumblr. Because hey, all the cool kids are on that.

So I looked into it again and I came out of it with two things.

1. While you can create something of value on Tumblr, I think that the social network, which feels like a weird graft of your Twitter network onto a WordPress site, is essentially valueless. I don’t see myself wanting to log in to a blog just to find another way to read some particular feeds dedicated to funny things and possibly repost that when Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter do all of those things better and with more content.

2. I remain distinctly uncomfortable with the fact that to ‘tumbl’ I have to log on to Tumblr and I am reliant on their site to host my content. I know this is sort of hypocritical, considering I’m talking about all my posting on Twitter and Facebook, but for some reason Tumblr in particular makes me distrust it. I think it’s because I ‘update’ Facebook and Twitter, but I ‘post’ to Tumblr. If I’m going to open myself to the possibility of creating content greater than 500 characters, I’d really like to do it on my own terms.

So perhaps I’ll do the Tumblr thing, but here instead.

Also Textpattern’s code is sort of fascinating to me. I wonder where HTML5 is going to take it or if it will be left behind as part of a sort of XML revolution that never was.

Oh hey, it is now dark, I can walk home and possibly not get heatstroke. Good stuff.