Who Are the Top 10 Charlottesville News Media Personalities on Twitter?

Taking a cue from FishbowlDC, which this week ranked the top ten Washington, D.C.-based anchors for national news shows based on their number of Twitter followers, I became curious about how Twitter is used by broadcast personalities in the Charlottesville media market.

Looking at the on-air talent listed on the web sites for WVIR-TV NBC29, the Charlottesville Newsplex (CBS19, WAHU-TV27, WVAW-TV16), WINA-AM, and WCHV-AM&FM, and then looking for Twitter handles for each of those listed, I made a few surprising discoveries.

First, the vast majority of broadcast media reporters and anchors have very few Twitter followers. Only a relative handful have more than 300 and most have fewer than 200 followers -- and some are in the single digits.

Second, the Newsplex seems to be making the greatest effort to leverage social media -- or at least Twitter -- by making it easy for someone looking at the Newsplex web site to locate and follow talent on Twitter. Every nember of the Newsplex's on-air maintains a personal Twitter account, although Bradley Ussery's is designated as @CBS19Weather. With 2,418 followers, this is the top Twitter account among those I found, but since it is not a personal account, I do not include it in the top ten.

Third, WINA-AM seems to make virtually no effort at promoting itself and its programs on Twitter. I could not find accounts for WINA Morning News hosts Jane Foy and Rick Daniels, and noontime host Rob Schilling and afternoon host Les Sinclair have only 173 and 243 followers, respectively.

Fourth, although NBC29 seems not to be making as concerted an effort at Twitter engagement as its rival the Newsplex, its individual talent are not doing so badly under the circumstances. Reporter Henry Graff is ranked second while his colleague Matt Talhelm just missed the cut, coming in 12th according to my research.

Only one radio personality, Coy Barefoot of WCHV-FM, made the top ten list, but he also has a Sunday morning TV program on CBS19, which could possibly boost his following.

I did not include print media in this study, which now would include just The Daily Progress and C-VILLE, so the available sample of Twitter accounts may not be satisfying.

Here is the list of Charlottesville's top ten broadcast media personalities on Twitter:

1) Travis Koshko (Newsplex) / @TravisKoshko / 2,186 followers

2) Henry Graff (NBC29) / @HenryGraff / 1,529

3) Dan Schutte (Newsplex) / @schuttedan / 1,410

4) Coy Barefoot (WCHV-FM/CBS19) / @coybarefoot  / 1,289

5) Chris Stover (Newsplex) / @ChrisStover / 1,198

6) Michelle Rupp (Newsplex) /@MichelleRupp /1,000

7) Bo Sykes (Newsplex) / @bosykes / 972

8) Ed Sykes (NBC29) / @EdSykes29 / 963

9) Mary Dunleavy (NBC29) / @MaryDunleavy29 / 809

10) Evanne Armour (Newsplex) / @EvanneArmour / 802 

 I don't make any judgments about the quality of these broadcast journalists' work, other than to suggest that these ten are making a greater effort -- some with corporate support, some without -- to engage their audience through one social media platform, Twitter.

I would welcome any comments from the people listed about how they use Twitter, whether they are satisfied with the results of their experience, and whether they prefer Twitter over other social media platforms (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, for example) or vice versa.  What are your goals in using Twitter?

I would also be interested in hearing from those who follow these ten (or any other local media personalities).  What do you gain from following them on Twitter?  What suggestions do you have for improving their engagement with you as an audience member?  How can Twitter be better integrated with the broadcast experience? 

Leave your comments below, or Tweet them to me at @rick_sincere.

Comparing 2013 Movie Box Office With Movie Search Trends on Google

Just out of curiosity (or perhaps late-night boredom), I decided to compare the top ten movies of 2013 in terms of box office receipts against the top ten movie searches on Google during the 12 months of 2013.

To my surprise, there was a big difference between the two lists. Only three films appeared on both: Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, and Despicable Me 2.

I took the box office figures from the 2013 domestic grosses reported by Box Office Mojo.

As you can see from the Box Office Mojo list below, the top-grossing movie of 2013 in the United States was Iron Man 3 (it grossed over $409 million); it was the number two search on Google.

Man of Steel was the top search term on Google but only the fourth-ranked grosser at the box office (with just over $291 million in receipts).

The animated Despicable Me 2 was ranked seventh in Google searches and third in box office receipts (charting just under $368 million in ticket sales).

Source:  Box Office Mojo

Top-grossing films that didn't make Google's trending search list included The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Monsters University, Gravity (with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney), Fast and Furious 6 (starring Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker), Oz the Great and Powerful with James Franco, Star Trek Into Darkness, and the animated holiday release, Frozen.

Trending search terms on Google's list that did not reach the top ten in box office receipts included the zombie saga World War Z, Jobs (the Steve Jobs biopic featuring Ashton Kutcher), The Conjuring, Baz Luhrmann's post-modern take on The Great Gatsby, The Purge (with Ethan Hawke), Pacific Rim, and Mama (starring Jessica Chastain).

I should mention that I have not seen any of the fourteen movies that span these two top-ten lists.  (The most recent narrative films I've seen this year are Nebraska, with Will Forte and Bruce Dern, and the overrated August: Osage County, as well as the political documentaries Caucus, Our Nixon, and The Kennedy Half-Century.)

Setting aside that (embarrassing?) admission, are you as surprised as I am by the relative lack of correlation between the two top-ten lists? If you have a theory to explain it, leave a comment below.

What Were the Top 10 Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner Stories in 2013?

Over at Examiner.com, I have posted a listicle featuring the top ten stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.

I used Google Analytics to provide the statistics and generate the top-ten list. Technically, the article I listed as number 10 was number 11.

The reason for that is that the article that came in ninth, according to Google Analytics, was originally published in November 2010. It's an interview I conducted with author and documentary filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy at the Virginia Film Festival that year, when she presented Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird.  (That film covers the same ground as Murphy's 2010 book, Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird.)

I suspect that the staying power of that three-year-old article, "Filmmaker: To Kill a Mockingbird was ‘ammunition in the civil rights movement'," is largely the result of web searches by high-school students doing research for a term paper about Harper Lee's famous novel or its well-regarded movie version.

Since just nine of the top ten stories for 2013 were actually published in 2013, I decided to skip number nine and include number 11 to reflect more accurately the events of this year.

Here's part of my summary of the 2013 top ten. I'll omit the "number one" article for now. If you want to see that story and be as surprised by it as I was, click here.

Virginia politics, the 1963 Kennedy assassination, humorist Tina Fey, marijuana legalization, liquor laws, and the Boston Marathon bombers dominated the most popular stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.

Given that 2013 was a gubernatorial election year in Virginia, it comes as no surprise that articles about Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe (now governor-elect) and his Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli drew a large number of views. Cuccinelli, in fact, was the subject of three of the top-ten stories, although Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis entered the top ten only in an interview about the election with political scientist Larry Sabato. Marijuana-smoking lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson (R) also made the list.

The JFK assassination was a trending topic on Twitter and Google through much of November, and an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald's co-worker ranked third. (An interview with another assassination witness just missed the cut, at twelfth among 2013 stories.)

Publishing this top-ten list continues a tradition I began in December 2011.  That first yearly list was divided into three parts published over three days: Part I, Part II, and Part III.  The second annual top-ten list, in 2012, was slimmed down into a single article published on the last day of the year.