Barry Peters: Follow us on Twitter
The times they are a changin’.
Bob Dylan’s 1964 classic came out before I was born – but its sentiment really touched me in the past week.
I had been conducting some interviews for a reporter vacancy and it was this which got me to thinking about the future – and the past.
The graduates sitting before me were mostly born around 1990. I still can’t quite come to terms with the fact that these potential colleagues will never have heard of those early 80s ‘classics’ Shaddup You Face or The Birdie Song.
I asked one of these fresh-faced hopefuls where she had learned about the death of Col Gadaffi. It’s a stock question. She hadn’t read it in the Times or Telegraph – she’d ‘got the info from Twitter after someone had Facebook’ed her’.
I’m not sure if ‘to Facebook’ is a proper verb yet, but it won’t be long.
And then the terrible events of the weekend unfolded – Peter Avis’ death in Bury’s Abbeygate Street and the sinking of the gargantuan cruise liner off the Italian coast.
Where did we learn about those events? Not on the pages of a newspaper – but again via Twitter, the internet, TV.
Before our very eyes, a change is happening – and the Bury Free Press is at the very heart of it.
We’ve got hundreds of friends on Facebook and hundreds of followers on Twitter – people who now rely on us to bring them news in a very different format to how we did even five years ago.
The death in Abbeygate Street hasn’t been seen in the Bury Free Press until today – but we’ve written countless words already, taken videos and pushed the information out to a hungry audience.
I’m looking forward to the next few years immensely – imagine where we might be if technology and society continues at its heady pace over that timespan.
And don’t dismiss those early 80s classics either – they were prophetic songs. After all, who sang The Birdie Song? The Tweets, of course.
n You can be our friend on Facebook – just pop in a request and we’ll get back to you. You can also follow us on Twitter –
@buryfree – for the very latest news.
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Weather for Bury St Edmunds
Friday 25 May 2012
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Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
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