The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point was, for me, a very long yet insightful read, and if you apply the context and different strategies to online and multimedia journalism, you can easily see how the text directly affects how we conduct ourselves in this sort of virtual, interactive, journalistic atmosphere.

The first part of the book mentions three different types of people: Connectors, Salesmen, and Mavens. We, as multimedia journalists, are Connectors. We connect different groups of people everyday through our stories and through our interactions with people, and that goes for in-person reporting and online reporting. Everyday when you walk into the newsroom, you never know who you're going to meet or which way your story is going to turn or who has some sort of contact or connection in relation to your pitch until you go out there and connect with people. That is literally the foundation of our occupation-- connectivity.

Another good thing that I thought the author brought up, especially in relation to connectivity and connectedness, is how the greatest of things always come from something small. For example, in the introduction, the author brought up the topic of infectious diseases and how they usually start out in a random, small group of people or from an area that isn't well-known or occupied, and yet these huge diseases that have affected us throughout the course of human history and that even continue to affect us today (ie: STDs) came out of these tiny places.

The same goes for ideas or basically anything else in life. If something were to grow big or if you want something to get bigger, you need to start small.

Lastly, and this is what I think stuck out to me the most, was that in life you have to work hard and put things out multiple times in order to make them stick. I think that this point was ironic because in today's world, especially in news, people complain about always seeing or hearing the same movie or song or news about the same accident, actress, disaster, person, etc., yet if we didn't put out multiples of something, how would someone remember it? How would it stick out in someone's mind?

(Also, shoutout to Sesame Street and Blue's Clues for making it into the book. Thank you for the childhood memories and helping me learn my ABCs and 123s)