Social Media: The New Gatekeepers

Which side of the fence are you on?

The other day a friend of mine sent me a reporting/writing-related job that could be done from home. Perfect. I see the name of the person I should apply to and of course I do what's now possible. I Google him.
Up until a few years ago, without Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any of the social media sites, if you saw a name on a piece of paper the information attached to the name in the form of a resume would be read and judged on the merit of the information and how it was presented.

In terms of work search, you'd look at the piece of paper sent to you and not be able to do all the background work ahead of time to determine whether the person was someone you'd want to bother speaking with, getting to know, and perhaps work with, or whether they're actually the one that was admitted to the psychiatric ward according to your neighbour down the street who happened to be in there at the same time. Or, weren't they the one that cheated on your ex-husband after he dumped you? I think you understand what I mean.

In the past, a name on a resume and that person's experience would have to stand alone with only written or verbal references in the form of hearsay or word-of-mouth to substantiate their value as an employee and their character. But, that was then.

Not exactly a revelation I know. But, knowing something and seeing the reality of it are two different things.

The reality of understanding that when someone gets my information that they are more likely than not to Google me, check LinkedIn to see how many/few "connections" I have, or how many "friends" I have on Facebook, caused me today to feel a little down given that I am not a Washington, D.C. mover and shaker as if that needs to be stated. How much further away could I get from that reality I wonder?

Has this technology changed the way we "judge" in a way that might be considered an improvement or are all these social media sites just tools for allowing people to discriminate more effectively and in a more insidious manner with class being just one of the parameters they'll be able to discriminate against?
When I looked at the results for the person I Googled, it became really clear to me that I probably don't have a hope in hell of getting an interview even though I have the experience to do the work (being fully aware that so would a lot of other people.)

He's more than 10 years younger than I am; a fact he'll surely notice when he looks at the year I graduated from university and the year I obtained my education in Journalism.  His wedding got published in the style section of The New York Times because his family is financially successful enough to count and he went to the best journalism school in the U.S. completing a Masters and receiving a fellowship that enabled him to travel and work in a developing country.

Lest this sound like sour grapes, I'm also very aware that these sites can be really beneficial in aiding people to make connections they otherwise would not make in their natural and much smaller social circles as wel as allowing them to establish in-person meetings that often lead to very positive relationships.

Sometimes however, it can feel as if social media sites are just another virtual world of "the old boy's club" - albeit easier to penetrate - at least as an observer.

They are virtual first impressions that welcome you in or lock you out before you've even had a chance to truly show up. For me, it's a sobering thought.

What are your thoughts?

Facebook Reconnections a Friendly Bonus

I am beginning to see the value of Facebook. Within the last 2 weeks I have had really enjoyable times with 3 people who, if not for Facebook, I wouldn't have connected with. Afterall, Facebook enables connectivity between people even when face-to-face connections are really tenuous.

In 1993 when I first got out of Journalism school, I got my first journalism job at The Royal City Record in New Westminster. The woman who hired me is above on the left. Pat is the editor of the community newspapers in New Westminster and Burnaby.  I worked for her on call for the Spring/Summer of 1993.

It just so happens that Pat lives with her partner on a floating home and at the time I was just getting involved with Mac who also lived on a floating home. The floating home communities where they lived are small and people know each other.

In fact, Pat's partner Janna, used to walk their dog and go for a walk with Mac with his dog on the dyke almost every day for a few years. The last time I saw Pat and Janna was November 1998. I remember it dinstinctly because I was standing in Mac's dilapidated living area on his float home. I was having an almost hysterical meltdown, crying, barely able to spit out the words, "Look at this place, no wonder he killed himself." Janna was trying to comfort me and Pat said something like, "It's not that bad."  We could all laugh at that now." At the time it was heartbrakingly painful to me and that memory is still one of the most vivid, still able to evoke a tinge of sorrow in my heartcentre as I think of it.

When Mac died, Pat and Janna adopted Mac's dog Molly whom he had adopted from the SPCA a few years earlier. Molly was this really gentle, beautiful, medium-sized, calico-coloured fluffy dog with the saddest brown eyes. Apparently, I found out today while being treated to breakfast by them, that Molly had a wonderful life with them living to a ripe old age and enjoying life on their many camping trips and walks by the river.

Pat saw me on Facebook because she is connected to someone else I know, a reporter, who works for The Vancouver Sun, also on my Facebook page. On Friday morning, I saw Pat's post that she was worried about the ferry's capability of dealing with Friday's winds and she couldn't wait to get to Salt Spring. When I read that I extended the invitiation to meet up with them for a coffee if they felt so inclined since they were going to be on island! 

We met this morning for breakfast at The Treehouse and I really enjoyed catching up. It was a true gabfest. Turns out the friend they are visiting lives less than a minute up the road from where I now live. They also own a cottage on the ocean in Newfoundland where they spend about 7 weeks in the summer. They bought that in 3 days on a cross-Canada trip a few years back where they pulled (Desi and Lucy Arnaz-style, a fifth wheel trailer). Check out the movie from 1954 The Long, Long Trailer, if you don't know what I'm talking about.

The other person that Facebook enabled the connection to was Byron, whom I'd met just once when he bought one of my photos at The Saturday Market.  He came back to Salt Spring over Christmas for another week-long silent retreat and we had lunch on New Year's Day. It's not like we keep in touch directly on an ongoing basis but it's nice to know that when he comes to Salt Spring he can always contact me and if we feel like it we can get together and enjoy each other's company.

Facebook really may transform virtual relationships into face-to-face interactions and that, for the most part, is the ultimate connection dontcha think?

What's your best Facebook re-connection/connection story? Leave a comment!

Crowd Powered Media Bytes Newspapers

It used to be good for wrapping fish in. Sure, maybe it works to line the bottom of the bird cage. It's great, I hear, for making paper mache donkeys for birthday parties. But reading it every day? Subscribing and paying for it? Are you kidding me? Daily newspapers are headed in the same direction as typewriters.

Poynter Online posed this question in a 2008 poll, "Today it's possible to stay informed without subscription to a daily newspaper?" A whopping 79% of respondents said they agreed or mostly agreed. We have to assume that the other 21% suffered a cardiac arrest just as their HB was about to circle "agree".

I always feel a little sorry for those telemarketers from the Vancouver Sun or Province newspapers. I mean, I'm not even of the generation raised on the Internet. I don't get the appeal of text messaging because it just seems like too much work to try and find the right teeny weeny little keys. I've never Skyped. I only bought a cell phone a year ago.

But, the damp smell of obsolescence fills my nostrils every time I have to cut one of those telemarketers off in mid sentence to say No. Don't want it. Don't have time to read it. Don't think the trade-off between trees cut down and crap written down is good value.

My new favorite way to get news is to go on to sites such as NowPublic.com. It's like having a correspondent in every city and a photographer on every corner. I can even upload my own photographs on to a story. I can comment on the news stories that are there. I can read others comments and see others photos and watch videos.

Okay, maybe Joe Blow from Arkansas was never trained as a journalist. Maybe the writing isn't great, but as the site says journalism is not rocket science. Got a question. Get the answer. Get the answer from people who know better and who saw it firsthand.

Nowpublic.com is like a news-based wikipedia. It's a visual Twitter. And, if you get something wrong, you can be sure that somebody out there on the planet is going to correct you so the facts will be as factual as any reporter can get and the stories will be more immediate.

Now, having said all that, I'm glad I experienced the old days of journalism. I'm glad that I worked in a newsroom that was a bit like the one in the movie from the book The Shipping News.

Being at that small newspaper was fun. It was crazy. I loved it. I hated it. It was so politically incorrect that it's hard now for me to believe some of the things that got said and done. Did they actually happen or was I just dreaming them?

When I worked at that paper there was a rough around the edges, hard-nosed production manager named Graham who actually layed out the paper in the back. I used to go into a dark room and develop by hand the black and white photographs that I'd gone and taken at some accident scene or junior hockey game.

Being a reporter - pre-digital - was in fact the job that demanded more skills than any other job I've ever had to date and it paid next to nothing. It paid poverty-level wages. Why is that okay? Why has that always been okay? For the same reason it's okay that professional athletes can make millions. No reason. No good reason. It's just the way it is.

The rationale behind Nowpublic.com is the same as the rationale for deciding to uncopyright your creative work. In fact, people who have gone that route have found that their work has received more exposure by getting their name out into the world. They choose the degree to which their work is copyrighted, an idea put forth by Creative Commons.

In a world of ever-expanding social media, I can't help but think that newspapers are now in the same position as men were when Gloria Steinem said, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle!"

Do the Dishes and Get Laid

Maybe you've heard that Stats Can has released a study that shows that some men are doing more housework and as a result they're getting laid more. All I have to say about that is were they in a gay bar when they did the survey?

If you happened to catch that pathetic TV Show on CBC called The Week the Women Went, in which they took a little town in Alberta and they put all the women on buses for a luxury week in Banff while the men had to deal with the kids and the house, it was pretty clear that only one of the men, maybe two, even knew where the dishwasher or the washing machine was let alone how to turn them on. The really sad part was how few of them were actually interacting with their children in a way that isn't going to damage them for life. But that's another story. And, clearly, what this study is suggesting is that if you can't turn on the dishwasher that's not the only gadget you won't be turnin' on.

Doesn't that seem weird to you? They can rebuild an engine but they can't turn on the dishwasher? They can create a robotic space arm but they don't know how to find the brush that cleans the toilet? Maybe the robotic space arm was actually designed solely by women. We should check on that.

Now, I personally couldn't care a less because I don't have any men in my house. I mess it up all by myself. I clean it up all by myself. When I have to. When company's coming. Maybe. That how it works in my "How to stay single forever" reality. Housework to me ranks right up there on the interest scale with, let's say, curling!

And, interestingly enough, the two men I've lived with for any significant length of time have been really good at cooking and at housework. Perhaps it's an inverse correlation directly related to how good the woman is at those.

In 2006, 87.9 per cent of men said they did housework, up from 84.4 per cent in 1996. Say that again. Eighty-seven percent? I'm sorry but when I look at people I know, who live with husbands or live-in boyfriends, I really don't get the feeling that that number is accurate.

Did they give them a definition of what housework is before they asked the question? Taking the empties from the TV room to the kitchen counter, did that count?

The only thing I liked about the study is that it shows that if you don't treat someone else like your personal slave, then, yes, it's probably likely that you're going to have a relationship that's more affectionate than if you are still acting like a child wondering when mom's coming home to cater to your every whim. Although, I question that even as I write it given so many of the realities I've witnessed.

Then again, it was dear old mom, and her refusal to teach her son (and to be fair, her daughters) how to do anything around the house that created the monster in the first place.

It's always mom's fault isn't it?