As Facebook Turns Six, Reporters Mixed on Its Role for Journalism

Editor’s note: In order to see Facebook’s influence on the news world was as potent as supposed the Gordon College News Service conducted all of the research, and all but one interview over the site.

By Alysa Obert

Gordon College News Service

February 10, 2010

IPSWICH--Dan Mac Alpine, veteran journalist and editor of the Ipswich Chronicle on Boston’s North Shore, initially hoped to wait out the Facebook craze. He figured it was going to be “just another AOL,” and wasn’t convinced that it would last. So he decided not to put too much time in to it.

There were also the moral, ethical and just awkward obstacles to overcome for Mac Alpine as an editor. “There is so much ambiguity with web laws right now and I don’t want to get caught in them” he said. “Besides there’s the awkward aspect of, oh, ‘my aunt is on Facebook but she’s not going to friend me’ stuff.”

But just this week Mac Alpine decided to create a Facebook page for the Chronicle. What caused the change?

“The traffic that a Facebook site creates,” he said. “Its that simple.”

Mac Apline is not the first to resist and then succumb to Facebook’s influence on Journalism. WGBH of Boston, WERS of Emerson College, the Salem News, and the Hamilton Wenham Chronicle all use Facebook as a place where we can “read all about it”. As the social media site celebrates its sixth year, its presence has extended to, if not caused the changing face of the newsroom, leading some to wonder if it is social media’s Associated Press.

Many stories are found and told through the site. For instance in December Jaho Coffee of Salem, MA, introduced another one of their experimental drinks, a Tiramisu latte. While the drink was made at the shop, its presence was made known on Facebook. In fact, Jaho’s Facebook page has 984 followers and the story was “picked up” by countless “friends”.

Jaho is not the only one sharing their news on Facebook, WGBH of Boston has 2,000 followers, and Nick’s Famous Roast Beef in Beverly, MA, connects hundreds of aficionados sending their praises from places as distant as Chicago.

So Mac Alpine’s motive for more traffic may be an understatement.

The Atlantic Monthly reported that in December of 2009 alone Facebook received 193 billion page views, almost as much as Yahoo and MSN combined. More important than an impressive statistic is what this says about how we get our news.

In a Facebook interview with GCNS, Derek Thompson online editor and blogger for The Atlantic Monthly said, “Facebook is a raft. Journalists are always trying to find out how to report stories and share them in new and exciting ways, and Facebook is one such way.”

But Thompson also suggests that there is a negative side to Facebook’s news for reporters and readers.

“Relying on Facebook as a newspaper substitute is dangerous,” said Thompson. “Friends are reading what their friends are reading, who are reading what their friends are reading, and so on.”

Getting our news through neighborhood gossip is not a new concept, but some suggest that the set up of Facebook worsens the problem exponentially.

Information becomes splintered through the comment sections and discussion boards. Though they can generate story ideas, people often read comments alone and not the articles. “That is, a bit like being in a restaurant and drinking the sauce around the chicken you ordered,” said Thompson. “Don't pretend you had the chicken just because you had the chicken reduction.”

While Facebook has the potential to further enmesh the circles we run in, it provides a larger readership if only in that circle. “If a friend posts my column on Facebook more people will read it,” said Thompson. “So its good for me!”

As to Facebook’s influence on the news, only till with tell whether it is a facelift or a face plant.

Airplanes: a free verse poem

by Alysa Obert

The interpellations of lives of lives

Spinning spinning ‘round spun

in separate spheres the membranes of our

bubbles stretch like the lungs every world

POPs the weasel or so that saying

goes to show us how a tinted

window on the Highway is no person at all but that

We are fabric mavericks knitted together eternally

Intertwined for a moment, each moment evading

creating lives but the silken sad uncertain

startles us so back to the deep

into the depths of the deep as we slink on

quoth the Raven nevermore we continue just

as before before we were alone and now alone

again so send just send me on my way.

Anteacups

by Alysa Obert

In dusty rooms I sit alone

with left forgotten ghosts of home.

The scent of old and perfumed hands

exotic herbs from distant lands,

A lovely object full of grace

an urchin now with saucer ‘n lace.

A treasure golden fair and prized

in spanking fashion idolized!

But now condemned to wait in dust

While those around me tarnish lost

In wait I whisper, hear my plea

in sleeping dust, remember me.

Survival of the Small Business: Gourmet Cupcakes in a Time of Recession

By Alysa Obert

Gordon College News

Service

1/26/10

Beverly MA--There are the vanilla butter creams, the chocolate swirls, and of course, Boston Cream. They sit in delicious rows beside Red Velvet, Italian Rum, and even Turtle-flavored cup cakes.

Yes, cup cakes. With 60 flavors and different sizes to choose from, the Cup Cake Café at 297 Rantoul Street in Beverly, MA, has seen a steady following of, well, indulgence since it opened five years ago.

“Now I dream cupcakes,” says owner and baker Monica Hatherley, who bought the bakery in 2004 when she was a real estate agent looking for a change. The bakery started out much like a coffee house, which sold a variety of baked goods.

“I made every mistake known to man the first couple of years: I used to open at seven in the morning, I made things I didn’t enjoy, I changed the hours,” said Hatherly. “One day I said, I don’t want to do this anymore, I just want to do cupcakes.”

The move was risky for Hatherly, but it lead to the success of her business. She soon learned that if she’d make what she loved, business would pick up. It did.

“It is so important to fit your personality to your business,” said Hatherly. “The joy of having

your own business is doing something that you love and cupcakes are what I love.”

Phone orders starting coming and now those calls dictate what goes into the case each morning. But there are staples which customers can count on like vanilla buttercreams or Boston Cream to name a few. New creations like the Snowball cupcake also sit proudly under the glass.

Hatherly makes a certain number of cupcakes each day depending on specific orders and what she’s in the mood for. Once they’re gone, customers are out of luck.

“We close when we sell all of our cupcakes,” said Hatherly. “Sometimes that is at two but sometimes five or six, but we always sell out.”

Friend and, customer Val Kenney, believes Hagerdly is successful because cupcakes make people happy. “Have you ever heard of anyone who was sad while eating a cupcake, ? I don’t think so,” said Kenney, who works on holidays and is paid in cupcakes.

The Café was recently featured on the Phantom Gourmet and Hatherly saw a new wave of customers. That meant new publicity, something she admits she’s still getting used to. With no plans to hire more help or to start another store, she sometimes feels overwhelmed.

“I don’t make a big deal about being here,” said Hatherly. “I’m as busy as I can be.”

In an economic recession it is hard to believe that cupcakes alone could make a successful business. But Hatherly thinks she knows why: “I guess I just cornered the market on happy.”

Jake Viel of Beverly MA, stepped into the Café for the first time to buy a birthday present for his friend but not forgetting to treat himself.

Clasp the Vast Conviction: A Nonsense Poem

She kisses clouds with breaths of Leather

drinking to surprise the snorting swelter

while Red throats trudge the pug

as winters dance belief in blunders.

Yet only with the ooze of supper do

we hug a dapper squeeze even to the slag.

Why must frogs tatter what bites

their blue could muster

or the wavering pistons glisten with dread?

Does not the apple swing steady

though napkins cut wrapped slumber

and move the eye asunder to tousle cracks

leaving flapjacks thin?

Clasp the vast conviction brazen rocks

for gutteral ruts have no peach tea cups!

Sentimental Insomniacs

by Alysa Obert

The challenge facing students at the end of the year is twofold.

Our judgment is hindered by massive quantities of burnt coffee, cheap vending machine nutrition, and the dark circles engrained in our eyes.

The end always arrives sooner than expected, even for

the classes we loathed. And we find the most eccentric

professors deeply rooted in our hearts.

Praxis Makes Perfect

By Alysa Obert

I recently interviewed Marv Wilson, Doctor of Biblical Studies here at Gordon College. At the end of the interview I somewhat rashly asked the question, “Why do you believe in Jesus?” Instantly I felt five years old and Dr. Wilson, amused by my red cheeks, took a minute to respond. “Because it works,” he said.  I looked up. That was it? That was all that the thought-provoking Theologian had to say? He had taken an hour to answer my first question; I thought this next would deserve a dissertation.

But it didn’t, and that intrigued me. I thought about this a long time after, mulling over its significance.  I realized I was struck by the fact that Dr. Wilson is an extremely pensive man yet his reason for believing, in this God that he can’t see by the way, is a matter of practicality.

 Here at Gordon College we love the theoretical. We ponder the questions of God and man with dogged sincerity. We even have a year-long program devoted to answering the question “what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?" or for non-greek speakers, "what in the world does it mean to be a Christian?” If you’ve ever sat through a Hunt class you are questioning everything to the point that John is now Lazarus and the Gospels are proof that everything is subjective…even the infallible Word of God.

I have loved and appreciated this about Gordon from the moment I walked on the campus. It is the reason I came here. I didn’t want to be handed doctrine but to discover it. At times this rocks me. It is maddening to be told that every answer is just a hypothesis we haven’t yet rejected. It makes me think that in this College life, we spend too much time in the dramatic world of theory.

Yes we have the duty to seek, to search, and therein find. However it is important understand that, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29). The verse continues, “the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” why? “That we may do all the words of this law” meaning the practical things of faith that God requires.

Israel, talk about a people who had the right to question; like what does God have against pork and why can’t I boil a young goat in its mother’s milk? But God does not ask that we understand, He asks that we obey.

Dr. Wilson did in fact say more than those three words, but not much. He explained that God called him, he responded, and that it was a great and mysterious mix of free will and divine intervention. “At the end of the day”, said Wilson, “I am a pragmatist. I have tried my faith and it works.”

It became clear to me that even the thinkers don’t believe because in theory it works, but because in praxis it is proven. So in that case, let’s praxis.