Twitter comes to WSU

Since joining Twitter in February, Football Head Coach Paul Wulff has amassed more than 1,000 followers. Wulff’s tweets are one of the most popular of the more than 50 WSU affiliated Twitter accounts.

“To a certain extent (Twitter is) still experimental,” said Barbara Petura, associate vice president for University Relations. “But it’s still a way to get publicity out.”

Petura said Cougar Athletics has probably been the most successful WSU Twitter user so far, and for other WSU users, “it’s still early in the revolution.”

Petura runs the WSUPullman Twitter account. She began it soon after the university moved to paperless internal communication last year. She said the decision to use only electronic media for internal communication was made to save money and help the university become more sustainable.

The move has decreased costs, Petura said, but Twitter’s role in the decrease is currently unknown.

“It Twitter saving money or making money? We don’t know yet,” Petura said. “Is Twitter building us new connections? Yes.”

For the faculty and staff at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, joining Twitter was an attempt to better reach out to students and alumni, said Brett Atwood, a clinical assistant professor in the college.

“It’s popular because the followers mostly consist of Murrow alumni or students who want to stay connected to the Murrow College,” Atwood said.

Atwood said Twitter is also popular and successful because it works by “opting in,” and people are choosing to receive information, rather than having it forced upon them.

However, keeping the account also requires constant upkeep. In addition writing tweets, Atwood monitors all the activity on the Murrow College Twitter page in an attempt to block spam and keep the page appropriate. He said he pulls out one or two tweets a week.

A negative of Twitter is that users are unable to see the links they click on, Atwood said. In the past, some of the links posted on the Murrow College’s Twitter page have been to adult sites.

“Twitter is a young format,” Atwood said. “It needs to look at issues such as spammers, piggybacking (on popular terms), and URL shorteners.”

Despite its relatively new status, Petura said Twitter has already been adopted by many major universities.

“Twitter lets us connect with people easily all over the world, depending on who you can get to follow you,” she said.

The WSU Twitter accounts are also being used for more than event or speaker announcements. Petura said the WSU Spokane Twitter account has a focus on the health sciences. When Barbara Chamberlain, WSU Spokane public affairs director, attends important meetings, she’ll “tweet the high points of what key people have said,” Petura said.

“We just really added Twitter as another tool,” Petura said. “Some units use it more than others.”

President Elson S. Floyd has even considered using Twitter, though for now he has decided to focus on his blog, said Brandon Scheller, communication coordinator for University Relations and the President’s Office.

“I’m not sure he sees it yet as a method that would be beneficial to communicating with students,” Scheller said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he chooses to use it in the future.”

Atwood said a lot of social networking sites go through hype cycles, and that’s likely what Twitter is experiencing right now.

“The idea of Twitter is here to stay,” he said. “Whether Twitter remains the dominant platform has yet to be seen.”

Sources:

Barbara Petura - 509-335-1980

Brandon Scheller - 509-335-6292

Brett Atwood - 509-335-0113

Infrastructure in the news - Transit

A story from the Spokesman Review about Spokane Transit is a nice supplement to my story about Pullman transit. As the WSDOT spokesman predicted, Spokane Transit is facing cuts to service.

And from the New York Times, a story about a push for stronger federal transit standards.

Increase in number of Pullman Transit riders continues

The news: Despite statewide decreases in public transportation revenues across the state, Pullman Transit continues to see increasing ridership and plans to expand.

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Liz Creelman shivered as she clung to her advanced accounting textbook Tuesday night. Creelman, a junior accounting and information systems major, was one of several students waiting for Pullman Transit's south route bus.

When the bus arrived, only a handful of seats were vacant.

“It’s worse during the day when it’s standing-room only,” Creelman said.

Creelman rides Pullman transit at least twice a day and has done so for the past two years. She said it’s cheaper than having a car and often safer in the winter.

“I have to pay the mandatory transit fee, so why not take advantage of it,” she said.

The number of Pullman Transit riders has increased 1 to 2 percent each year, said Chris Mitchell, Pullman Transit operations supervisor. Last year had the largest number of riders so far – 1.3 million – an increase of about 100,000 from the year before.

“A lot of (our growth) is based on our ability to put out more service,” Mitchell said. “We stay pretty much full. As we can add more seats, we get more riders.”

Creelman said the express routes have seemed “a lot more crowded” this year especially at the beginning of the semester. Justin Cox, a transfer student using Pullman Transit for the first time this semester, also noted that the buses are usually crowded.

“But there’s a lot of students so you have to expect that,” the junior criminal justice major said.

Statewide, the number of transit riders has also gradually increased since 2003, according to the 2007 Washington State Summary of Public Transportation report.

“Ridership has grown 18.12 percent since 2003 adding nearly 30 million passenger trips during the past five years,” the report states.

But the increase in riders can’t go on forever, said Don Chartock, WSDOT project development coordinator. He said the economic recession has impacted state transit systems “quite severely.” Almost every one of the 30 transit systems in the state is bringing in less revenue.

“Up until recently, there has been growth in revenue, so there was also growth in the transit systems,” Chartock said. “But revenue started to go down about a year ago and that will ultimately result in less service and therefore less riders.”

He said he expects to see a number of transit systems turn to voters to try and get more revenue.

The economic recession has had a minimal impact on Pullman Transit because its funding sources are more stable, Mitchell said.

Though students did vote last year to increase the mandatory transit fee by $10 for full-time students, that was not to make up for declining revenue, but rather to pay for increased service to meet increasing demands.

“Students took initiative to help fund a lot of the additional service,” said John Shaheen, director of Parking and Transportation Services.

In addition to money from the contract with WSU and the student transit fee, Pullman Transit receives revenue from utility taxes and operating grants from the state.

Mitchell said he expects the number of people using Pullman Transit to increase, despite the projected decrease for the rest of the state.

Pullman Transit is even planning to expand, he said. The system should acquire five new buses by 2010. The buses will replace old ones in the current fleet, but four of the new buses will also be bigger.

“If we can expand the capacity of buses, we can transport more people,” he said.

Sources:

Liz Creelman - ecreelman@wsu.edu

Justin Cox - cox24@wsu.edu

Chris Mitchell – 509-332-6535

Don Chartock – 360-705-7875

John Shaheen – 509-335-4911

Post on Frontline's Mayor West story

I did a response to this Frontline episode in J305.

See the entire post here.

Seeing part of it a second time, I still feel the same as I did then.

My biggest criticism of the entire investigation is that the Spokesman seemed too ready to believe that West molested young boys. They didn't want to see if it was proven through their investigation, it seemed, but rather used the investigation to prove that their hunch was true.

Even after West didn't go after the 17-year-old boy, they continued with the undercover operation.

Math

1) $7,885
2) 83%
3) Mean: $67,500
Median: $40,000
The median is more accurate because the CEO acts as an outlier messing with the mean.
4) It is a one percent increase in the overall food tax, but it is a 20 percent increase to the actual tax.
5) a. 25%
b. 33%
6) 10.7 %
7) Mean: $790,600
Median: $207,00
8) 3
9) Pullman - 0.0073, 73.2 assaults per 10,000 people
Spokane - 0.0025, 25 assualts per 10,000 people
10) $150,000

Ten Days in a Mad-House

I was not expecting the narrative style. It made it seem like a story, rather than a newspaper article, though it was still very interesting.

The narrative style also made it easier to tell her experiences. And because it was directly based upon her experiences, it made sense to use first person.

The account was also extremely detailed. It made me wonder if she recalled everything from memory, or found a way to take notes during her stay in the asylum. The style, however, also meant you didn't come across the serious abuse until much later in the story. A lot of time was devoted to setting up the scenario.

I was then disappointed by how the story ended and how the grand jury didn't get to see the horrible conditions for themselves.

Trend story ideas

1) Looking at the rates of students choosing to go to graduate school instead of jumping into the job market. With the poor economy, has there been an increase in the number of graduate students at WSU? What does this mean for WSU's graduate school?

2) Again focusing on the economy, are more students using Pullman transit? The fee was raised last year, but is it enough to cover the increased ridership? How is transit coping in the recession for receiving additional state funding?