Photo by Media Commons

By Kenneth Rosen

Editor-in-chief

He was hesitant.

“I’ll give you 80 bucks,” I said.

“Fine.”

And while this is the abridged version of the conversation between our “war correspondent” and myself, it’s how it all began.

District covered this year’s Humans versus Zombies event unlike ever before. I’m willing to say unlike any other student media organization has in the past.

I’d been on a social media frenzy since the convention in New York City and the start of my Writing and New Media class when I assigned the story to our Student Life editor: live-tweet the event with our own hashtag from the front lines. Oh, and Instagram everything, too. Oh, and post some videos to YouTube while you’re at it. Thanks, man.

Needless to say, it was a lot to ask of a fourth-year student during their final quarter.

I had no idea what to expect. I’d never used Storify, an epic social media aggregation tool that lets you create a live blog using status updates from Facebook, tweets off of Twitter, photos shared through Instagram, videos posted to YouTube and much more. It’s brilliant really, and, without a doubt, the future of multimedia journalism.

Other staff members doubted participants would tweet throughout the event, many didn’t think it was worth it. The worst that could happen, I figured, was I’d fail at the first offhanded idea of my term.

But here’s just a sliver of what we got:

And, armed with nothing more than a Nerf N-Strike Raider Rapid Fire CS-35 and an iPhone, Daniel Alvarez delved into college, err, zombie/war correspondence.

Our participation on Facebook jumped nearly 400 percent from what it was the week before. Our weekly amount of users rose more than 180 percent. Three words: social media success.

Although it was a spur of the moment idea, it was well worth it and a learning experience for all … even if I’m 80 dollars short.