omg, what now?

At Saturday’s NCAA Convention, Division I representatives confirmed that coaches cannot text-message recruits. (Coaches can still e-mail recruits, and, I assume, instant message them.) I didn’t realize coaches were using texting to recruit until the New York Times wrote a story about it, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, you can text your pizza order; get breaking news alerts via text (yeah, I’m that person … and I get alerts from several sources); report a crime; even conduct an interview via text message. In Egypt, you can even get divorced. And all of this isn’t including booty calls, drunk texts, Twitter and its many clones, and, you know, regular texting.

First, I’m not sure how I’d feel if I was being recruited (I assuming for a job, because I am not at all athletic) via text. It better be from someone I’ve already established a relationship with.

More important, though, what does this say about the future of journalism? Or, more precise, newspapers? Our youngest readers, or those we want as our youngest readers, are used to and demand immediacy. They communicate in short burst, whether texting, IMing, Twittering, whatever. They embrace technology, and manipulate it to do more.

This technology revolution is changing everything, including our political process. The news cycle is constant, and voters no longer have to rely on newspapers or TV news to get information. Presidential candidates created MySpace and Facebook profiles and groups and YouTube channels, sent e-mails and built mash-ups. Still, there was no guarantee that the message was received or interpreted as they intended. The voters that the candidates are targeting get their information from friends, by surfing YouTube, and from late-night satire (which, of course, has been missing until recently — and some would say still is — because of the writer’s strike) before they think of hitting mainstream media.

But in the newsroom, there are still a lot of references to the evils of the Web; a reluctance to immediately post breaking news; a lack of understanding of social networks, social bookmarking and blogs. I find breaking stories on Twitter before I find ‘em on newspaper sites (and not just because I post ‘em there). And we still write incredibly long stories.

How do we strike a balance?

This post is part of the Carnival of Journalism. Sorry, no cotton candy, but there could be a few clowns. Check out the shenanigans, being hosted at Adrian Monck’s blog.