Social Media Gone Waaay Wrong at NPR

NPR (and BBC World Service) are normally my favorite sources of information, news, and entertainment… so I write this critique with deep sadness and a heavy heart.

NPR – I am disappointed in you!

Oscar Night, March 7th. I don’t usually watch the Oscars but there was (is) a rumor that folks from one of my absolutely favorite radio shows, “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” would be doing some sort of live coverage of the Oscars beginning at 7:30. This was (is) guaranteed to be a hoot.

IF you can find it. Whatever it is. Apparently they didn’t hesitate to not tell me.

Is it “live” radio? Is it live radio on MY local public radio station? Is it a podcast… streaming audio… streaming video maybe?

Almost 8:00 and I still don’t know WHAT it is, and I still don’t know WHERE it is.

So far all I’ve found is a “live-blog” by Linda Holmes. What’s a “live blog”, you might very well ask. Apparently it’s an annoyingly-embedded comment feed with no discernible difference to Twitter and it’s hogging my bandwidth and clogging my browser. Not to mention what it’s doing to my last thread of patience.

8:05 and I finally find the “live” coverage by the witty & friendly folks at Wait Wait. And what is their “live” coverage? A snails’ pace slideshow of still pics accompanied by friendly & witty captions.

Don’t get me wrong – I like the captions added to the pictures.

But let’s get back to the journalistic basics, my friends – the Who, What, Where, When ought to be in the headline. (We won’t bother with Why. It’s the Oscars, and there’s not a good Why that I can think of.)

A word to the wise, NPR – if you’re gonna go all high-tech & social on my butt, don’t begin with Oscar night. And if you’ve actually done this before and STILL managed to perform this poorly, don’t do it again… OK?