Reporting Live on... Twitter?

I have a policy. You're allowed to complain about something almost exactly once with me. You're allowed to complain a fair bit. Occasionally, you're allowed more than one gripe session, but you need to bring more material. You need to have fresh complaints.

However, if you keep going back for more of the same without working toward a solution, then you probably need to find a new crying post.

I'm not trying to be cold. I don't want to seem unsympathetic. But yeah, I think you either stop putting up with it, you get to work on fixing it, or you stop complaining to me about it.

So if a business model stops working, shouldn't you stop working with that business model? If you keep trying, are you persistent? Or are you a bit slow on the uptake? Maybe you are doing as Benjamin Franklin (or was it Albert Einstein? Perhaps a Chinese proverb?) warned against by "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

"Who Moved My Cheese" by Dr. Spencer Johnson was published about ten years ago. It's about some mice and some cheese and basically, it lays out the need to grow and change both individually and organizationally. I read it in the subway one afternoon in Manhattan, going home from work. It wasn't exactly new information, but it was a well-done little book.

Someone moved our cheese in journalism. It's gone. We've got to figure out where to find new cheese or consider going vegan. Remembering the good old days is okay, but crying over those days doesn't work for me. By my calculations, we've been crying for over ten years now. Our business model seemed like it was evolving, but now it seems to have switched species. And no, it doesn't work.

And neither does tweeting. Ha! Well, not endlessly anyway. So...

Thank you for twittering about: news conferences, seismic measurements, correct spellings of names, stories coming up, locations of very large fires, travel plans, updates on news conferences, parade times, business hours, show times, parking arrangements, flight arrival times, road closures, and um, occasionally blog postings.

Thank you again for NOT twittering about: wearing your fanny pack on your front, traffic complaints on your vacation to Southern California, reading Larry King's wife's twitters on your trip to Southern California, ANYTHING to do with American Idol, and kids or husbands who wear contact lenses/socks/underwear more than three consecutive days.