Don’t forget to sharpen your critical thinking skills.
Like reading a hard poem or novel, “reading” data and commentary requires a free mind, a measure of originality and decent aesthetic judgment.
Virginia Heffernan, “Cellphone Fears, Twitter tears”
As a journalist or entrepreneur, your gateway to progress is usually through a digital box called your computer. You receive an email or tweet about a topic that interests you, then you share it with a community (blog, article, social media site).
It would be way less effective if you, say, went outside and yelled: “IS TWITTER MORE LIKE TALKING OR WRITING? LET ME KNOW I LIVE IN 3A.” But, that would be hilarious. However, the path to enlightenment or knowledge isn’t so linear.
You think: well, duh. But how long do you spend passively experiencing the internet? This isn’t a post trying to convince you to go outside ( no, really, get off the computer). But there is a special process to actually making yourself a valuable purveyor of information and it requires you being proactive.
You just need someone to be real with you: you need to be sharp to make it in this business. My professor once said that journalism is one of the hardest industries because we are EXPECTED to be experts on almost everything. If you have to cover a discussion panel on molecular biology, you should feel comfortable explaining bio-synthesis to a child.
I fully believe that social media can turn lethally passive. However, access to information isn’t a bad thing as long as you’re aware that you need to be active. Plato feared writing, but we’ve become smarter since the invention of the pen.
The age-old question: does more information equal intelligence?
According to a study - kids who used twitter for school earned a half point higher GPA. The study also notes that these tweeters were much more engaged (again, that whole proactive horse I keep mercilessly beating) in activities.
