I’m the newbie here at LexBlog, and I’ve noticed one thing right away. Kevin is always on Twitter. But that’s nothing new. Well, recently on Twitter, he discovered social media journalist Ron Sylvester (@RSylvester), who does live reporting from the courtroom in Kansas.
Kevin found Sylvester’s vlog (a vlog is a blog, but with video in every post) intriguing. And perhaps you will, too. I interviewed Sylvester about his vlog, and asked him how lawyers can build relationships with journalists via the Internet, and learn from what he does.
“I could pick any courtroom and come out with a good story,” Sylvester said. “They are the height of human drama.”
Sylvester, a journalist for 32 years, has been on the court beat at the Wichita Eagle since 2000. His vlog, What the Judge Ate For Breakfast, is home to video clips showing compelling testimony from inside Wichita’s courtrooms.
“It shows a side of the courtroom that the people don’t really get to see,” said Sylvester. His time in the courtroom can be bizarre, especially when people show up and it turns out they know one another. Wichita’s population is roughly a half million people.
Sylvester was the first in his newsroom to embrace video. In the spring of 2008, he started tweeting live trials on Twitter. According to Sylvester, people really liked it. Now, his tweets feed onto his vlog. The videos deliver a full picture of what the courtroom is about.
“I’m trying to give people an insight as to why things happen,” he said.
Many lawyers use the vlog as an educational tool. “They [lawyers] can show their clients what to expect at a sentencing or plea hearing,” he said.
Some lawyers even use the vlog to see how they perform, or how other lawyers perform too. On occasion, Sylvester will interview lawyers to add context, and then other lawyers can learn by listening to their commentary.
Sylvester calls social media the wave of the future. You can find him on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and of course on his vlog. His advice to lawyers is to just start using the different tools. Sylvester knows lawyers who use Twitter to find other lawyers in particular practice areas, to find experts, and to do research.
“Lawyers and judges need to get more comfortable with these different avenues of disseminating information, because I believe it’s the future of communications,” said Sylvester.
I couldn’t agree more.
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