Thursday, December 9, 2010

Are they serious?


Okay, I am obviously into "new technologies." I mean, I wouldn't be blogging if I didn't believe in using modern technology to express my thoughts and share my research on the Civil War.  And I maintain a Facebook fan page for the blog too.  But a Twitter feed from the Washington Post on the events leading up to the secession of South Carolina?  "In the words of the people who lived it"?  For real?  Some things just seem a little too clever by half.  What demographic are they going for here? What will this look like? "Voted 2 break with USA--brb, signing ordinance."  Gotta love it when the mainstream media shows interest in something many of us loved since we were kids.  It's going to be a long Sesquicentennial!

2 comments:

MarianneMeyers said...

This is hilarious! Do you really think this would draw in "the young people?" I always think history stands by itself the best, without a lot of crap attached, but maybe I'm just not with the times.

Ron Baumgarten said...

I never quite got the Twitter thing, and this style of historical writing touched a nerve!

I am not sure what could be achieved very effectively with Twitter in this context. It is like history lite. The NY Times does a much better job with their Disunion Opinionator blog, which tracks events more or less in real time (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/).