What's a Tweeter?
Grandparents are special people for many reasons; their relentless love, insistency to disobey what rules their children made for their grandchildren (which I’d say is a #winning situation all around) and the lessons they have to teach. As it turns out however, my grandparents needed a lesson in what the reference #winning means.
Both sets of my grandparents were in town for my brother’s high school graduation. At dinner that night, they were asking me about my work at CJP. While I was discussing day to day activities at our public relations agency, the topic of social media came up. Trying to explain “tweeter” (as my grandfather calls it) was not the easiest task as one of my grandparents does not own a computer.
I described “tweeter” as constant stream of news, to which my grandfather responded, “Why don’t you just read a newspaper?” Getting frustrated, I decided to pull “tweeter” up on my computer. I showed my grandparents tweets from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BBC in an effort to showcase “tweeter’s” legitimacy. Unfortunately, they were not having it. As my grandfather saw it, “tweeter” was an outlet that gave a “voice to hacks.” I obviously flew to the defense of my colleagues at CJP, explaining that with Klout scores as high as 57 (@WilsonCleveland), we could hardly be considered hacks! While twitter does, in fact, give a voice to everyone, it also creates a dialogue of information from well-respected and trusted sources.
The conversation got me thinking about the generational differences between myself and my grandparents. Instead of thumbing through the Wall Street Journal every morning over coffee, I read their twitter feed and use the WSJ i-Phone app. Is one method of obtaining information better than another? If we are both reading the same article, does it matter if one version is print and another is electronic?
According to my grandfather, there is a huge difference. Through picking up the physical newspaper, my grandfather is able to get directly to the source. He does not have to sift through other information (other tweets) and can sit down and truly enjoy the news of the day. While I appreciate the constant flow of the twitter dialogue, my grandfather feels bombarded with the information overload.
In today’s age of 24/7 news, the PR practitioner is always on, and the demand for real time analysis of news that can affect your client base, is only increasing. I have learned that one of the most valuable assets for a client is spotting a trend or a news angle that can leverage the client’s message or expertise before the topic becomes played out and audiences are sick of reading and hearing about it. Twitter’s “trending” feature is a valuable resource is this sense. It’s a one-stop-shop to find out what will most likely be painting the traditional news outlets’ headlines. This feature can put any PR practitioner ahead of the news cycle curve. It also helps PR practitioners break through the clutter when communicating what’s important and what will catch a reporter’s attention.
I’m embarrassed to say that I quickly became aggravated with my grandparents and about to write off the conversation as a generational divide when my grandfather created a bridge between the social media generation gap. He said, “I appreciate getting news from different sources; I subscribe to three newspapers daily. I also engage in a dialogue with the news; I write letters to the editor. We both have the same objective; our means of achieving it are just different.”
Is the generation gap really so wide? Perhaps we all simply have our own news collecting preferences. Regardless, I don’t consider having information just a click (or tweet) away a “modern inconvenience.” I guess for the time being, my grandparents and I will have to agree to disagree. 
Cary Ruterman is an intern at CJP Communications