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Being a Follower of Patrick Gavin
Follow the Leader Photo by Sandra Abrams
My mother always told me not to be a follower. She would tell my siblings and me, “If all you friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?” I agree with her, why be a follower? This is the question I have been asking myself, why follow Patrick Gavin of Politico on twitter (pwgavin) if it was not part of my homework assignment?
His beats are entertainment and gossip for the political website (bio on Mr. Gavin) and so far, I feel I must be missing something. I do not find his tweets all that entertaining. True, I have only been a follower for a few days so perhaps I am making a hasty judgment. After all, he does have 6,487 followers. Me? Nada, zilich, nobody.
Take one of his post from this past Tuesday, a tweet about entertainer, Jay-Z, and his new PSA about voting with a link to Gavin’s own story on Politico’s Click website. The link to his own story, is a brand builder, I understand that and would do the same. (screen shot insert)
It was interesting but on this particular day, there was bigger news happening inside the Beltway, right at the White House. Movie star, George Clooney, had a meeting with President Barack Obama. Yes, the session was on a very serious, topic, the violence in Sudan. Clooney was seeking help from the President. Gavin’s number of tweets on the star: nothing, not even a Retweet of a picture from one of colleagues from the stake out location where the actor gave a press conference following his White House meeting. Maybe I don’t understand the parameters of this beat but I would imagine that any entertainment figure in town would at least be acknowledge by the beat reporter in some fashion.
Many of Patrick Gavin’s tweets comprised of links to his story on the web or Retweets of colleagues’ stories. One R-T from Mark Knoller was actually a picture of the swing set used by the Obama girls, the same day Clooney was speaking to Obama. Still, I did like the tweet with the Washingtonian Magazine article about the music scene in the D.C. area. I saw this as way for Gavin to connect to his readers. But with so many followers, will they all be interested in D.C’s music? Another tweet was the list of people attending Quinn Bradlee’s wedding. That is the kind of fun information I would want from a reporter following this beat.
And why was he in Las Vegas, sending a twitpix of Pete Rose? Perhaps if I had been followwing Gavin longer, I would know. I see little interaction with his audience. I expected more, something juicy from Politico’s Gavin. I picked Gavin because I was having problems adding anyone to my list and finally got the add list to work. His name was at the top of the Politico lists and he does have many followers but I will not be one of them.