John Quincy Adams - the first Tweeter

The Massachusetts Historical Society has since 2009 been tweeting a line a day from the journals of the 6th President of the United States, John Quincy Adams.


President Adams fils (son) has kept a journal since boyhood, having been encouraged to do so by his father, President John Adams, who also kept a journal and authored many essays and letters. In fact, this Adams family has been a goldmine for scholars of the early history of the United States of America since members in this family (including the women) documented many aspects of their lives - domestic and political, which at times were one and the same.

It turns out even further that President Adams fils also mantained a journal where he recorded what happened in his life, but only using about one line a day - clearly the ancestor of tweeting. It is from this journal that a project was set up to actually tweet these lines on the date that they were written (some 200 years to the date later) daily.



The Twitter handle is: http://twitter.com/#!/JQAdams_MHS.



The link to the Massachusetts Historical Society project: http://www.masshist.org/adams/jqa.php.

Rossi should be blogging?

Joe Flint at the Paley Center blogged on January 16th about Lou Grant moving into the new millenium.


As a huge fan of the series, "Lou Grant," I nearly died at the changes he suggested. Let go of Charlie Hume, Art Donovan and Animal? No company car? Focus on celebrity news!!!! Never mind no mention of Billie of Mrs. Pynchon in this reorg. Will Billie get farmed out to fashion dos and don'ts?


I noted some tongue in cheek regarding this post, which does ask the question if the Tribune could have survived in the new millenium. The series was cancelled in 1982 or so before blogging and citizen journalism and Facebook and fax machines that did not need special paper. While celebrities grabbed their share of headlines in 1982, they did not dominate the way they do in 2009.

Hot shot young reporter Rossi would now be one of the old guys he was not always so kind to in the series. I wonder how he would deal with it.

What would they think about the endless stream of cases of plagiarism and fabrication? A failure of journalism school or of people in the trade?

The blog post is here:
http://www.paleycenter.org/rossi-should-be-blogging-remaking-lou-grant-for-the-21st-century/