Tracy Samantha Schmidt

Posts by Tracy Samantha Schmidt

When the Media Discovered Social Media at Virginia Tech

Posted on April 16, 2013

Yesterday at 3 p.m., my colleague looked up from his iPhone. “There was some kind of explosion at the Boston Marathon.” He immediately went to his computer and pulled up a news site. A banner ran across the page. Breaking: Two explosions at the Boston Marathon. No other information. I pulled up the Drudge Report on my phone. Nothing on it. Then I went to Twitter. “Oh my god what just happened?” “We heard two loud booms at the finish line.” “My friend is running!” “Blood everywhere.” “Are we under attack?” “Chaos in #Boston.” The pictures were graphic and raw. Blood-drenched sidewalks. People crumpled on the ground. Medics and runners running into the smoke. A 5-second video showed the explosion itself, a burst of…

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Why I Go by Tracy Samantha

Posted on February 20, 2013

My dad picked my name. If my mom had her way, I would be Hannah Rachel Schmidt. If my brother had his way, I would be Courtesy Schmidt–named after a hardware store, of course. (He was three.) But legend has it that shortly before I was born, my dad decided on Tracy Samantha. His inspiration? Katharine Hepburn’s character in A Philadelphia Story, Tracy Samantha Lord. I’ve seen the movie a few times and have yet to like her character. She’s a spoiled, self-absorbed heiress trying to decide between her ex-husband, Cary Grant, and the other guy, John Howard. My dad says he just liked the sound of her name. Tracy Samantha is a big name for a little girl, though, so I just went…

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Why Print is the New Luxury

Posted on February 10, 2013

Just before take-off, there is a moment. “At this time, please turn off all cellphones and put away your laptops and other electronic devices.” It’s a moment we say we hate, but secretly, we look forward to it. The excuse to disconnect–what a luxury. The average American spends at least six hours per day staring at a screen. Among highly educated adults, that number is even higher. We are staring at screens on our cell phones, tablets, laptops and TVs. Throughout our day, we see more screens in our cars, at the checkout, the bus stop, the back of a cab. Soon we will have screens in our kitchens, our laundry rooms, our nurseries. These screens can make our lives more efficient. They remind…

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How Do You Decide Who to Follow on Twitter?

Posted on November 29, 2012

It’s a basic question and everyone seems to have a different answer. Frankly, I’m still figuring it out myself and I have been using Twitter since 2008. Technically, you don’t have to follow another user on Twitter to see what he is tweeting. You simply have to know what his username—or handle—is and pull it up online. To see my tweets, you would go to http://www.twitter.com/tracysamantha. (The exception, of course, is if a Twitter user has marked his account private and has to give you permission to view his tweets. But hardly anyone uses a private Twitter account, so we’ll skip this topic for now.) The reason you would follow a Twitter user is to “keep up” with what he’s tweeting. That is, of…

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My High School Reunion in the Age of Facebook

Posted on November 23, 2012

My 10-year high school reunion was last month. I didn’t want to go because Facebook has made reunions irrelevant. If I wanted to see what a classmate was up to, I just had to look her up on Facebook. My mom insisted I go. “It will be good for your confidence,” said Mom, ever the therapist. “You still see yourself as an awkward teenager.” In high school, I wasn’t a nerd. I just really liked journalism– enough to be an editor of every publication at our high school and a columnist at our town paper. Maybe I did like to hang out in the lobby of Tribune Tower and pretend that I worked at the Chicago Tribune. And maybe I did read every issue…