In LA, teachers, students and those who care about schools were in revolt today against budget cuts, employee layoffs and plans to increase class sizes.
An LA judge ordered UTLA to call off a planned one day strike that was initiated to protest the budget cuts.
AJ Duffy, UTLA president, agreed. Duffy called for before-school and after-school protests. He was criticized by some for failing to hold firm to the strike call. Others simply took matters into their own hands.
From 2,000 miles away, if you wanted to know what is going on today in LA, the Old Media such as the LA Times was fairly worthless. Twitter sites such as CutsHurtKids re-tweeted the reports of teachers, students and ordinary citizens all day in real time. It was an amazing illustration of the value of the New Media. When someone asks me, “What’s the deal with Twitter?” I’ll tell them about today.
The UTLA Twitter site was also a valuable source. But their decision to have one person be their “reporter” rather than open it up to re-tweets meant it wasn’t as broad and timely as CutsHurtsKids.
But the LA Times couldn’t keep up. The story of the arrest of UTLA president, AJ Duffy, for example, was on the UTLA Twitter site an hour before it appeared on the LA Times web page.
Fred Klonsky 