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Wrong! It CAN be a chat — and a great one, at that — as I learned this week.

This past Monday night, I participated in my very first “Journchat“, and I had such a great experience that I thought I’d write about it for all of my readers.

For the uninitiated, @Journchat is a live chat on Twitter for journalists, public relations professionals and bloggers, run by Sarah Evans (@PRsarahevans). Designed for media industry professionals, the chat takes place from 7 – 10 pm on Monday nights, and is monitored and tracked through Cision, which then provides a neat transcript of the three-hour chat shortly afterward.

I’d never heard of “Twitterchats” before, but after my follower @MissVersatile invited me to participate, I was instantly curious (as I always am with new media), and was eager to jump in.

And jump in, I did…

I had no idea what to expect going in, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and came out with some meaningful connections in the industry.

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@Journchat works primarily through crowd-sourcing questions from its participants, pulling questions from knowledgeable industry folks in the industry. Here’s how it works: All are encouraged to send in questions to Sarah, up to fifteen minutes before the chat begins. Individual questions are then posed to all of the chat’s participants through the @Journchat account, one at a time, to foster a focused, engaging discussion.

Some are serious and industry-related (ex: “Is it possible to work in the media but not use social media?“, via @NicWirtz), some are on the sillier side (ex: “What’s one unanswered historical or current day story you wish you had the answer to (e.g. who shot Kennedy?“)… But it’s all fun.

There are about ten minutes for each question, which sounds like a lot of time for one question, at first. In actuality, however, the chat seems to move at a blisteringly fast pace, with so many people participating. The result is a frenetic Q&A session that truly gets people engaged. It was a lot of fun.

I was even lucky enough to have supplied one of the eleven questions published (not too bad for my first time!), and so I had the opportunity to ask more than 255 participants their thoughts. I have to admit, I was surprised by both the quantity and quality of the responses that I received!

Here’s the question that I asked:

“What do future journalists need to know about smartphones and how to use them? (What about mobile in general?)” #journchat

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In a fraction of an hour (they spend roughly 10 minutes on each question), my question generated more than 25 quality responses, that I personally saw. My guess is that there were dozens more that I couldn’t refresh fast enough to see.

Here are just a few of the best: (and yes, I did get permission from each to repost their answers)

“G20 reporting by civilians provided a great balance and reality dose for what was going on in trad. media #journchat -8:53 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @TheLTexpress

“Mobile puts the world around you online. If you’re a journalist without a smartphone; you’re not a smartjournalist. #journchat -8:54 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @PeteVossPR

“Smart phones certainly have fed the fire that is citizen journalism. #journchat -8:54 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @BrianJBradley

“Always have your phone on you. Quick pic, vid, tweet, or post is better than nothing! You can always write more later… #journchat -8:54 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @ThomasJArmitage

“Respect your audience & environment though. I hate people texting while I’m talking to them or phones going off in church! #journchat -9:02 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @ThomasJArmitage

“I do most my blogging and reporting from my HTC Evo, I think it has more apps on it then my laptop #journchat -8:59 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @MissVersatile

“They need a smart phone. End of story. #journchat Preferably a BlackBerry! -8:49 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @RolfeNorman

“Smartphones are your immediate connection to world’s events, sources and resources. A must. #journchat -8:54 PM Aug 23rd, 2010″ ~ @AndyCheco

“There’s an app for everything. We have #Marist apps. Learn how to use them. You have immediacy at your fingertips. #journchat -7:51 PM Aug 23rd” ~ @TcMassie

Again, thanks to the above people, and all others who responded to my question. Make sure to follow these people on Twitter, especially if you work in the media industry!

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Obviously, it’d be foolish to expect lengthy, drawn-out answers. For those who wanted to go into a bit more detail than Twitter‘s 140 character-limit allows, they simply more tweeted more often! But long answers aren’t the true purpose of @Journchat, as far as I can tell; it’s instead designed to highlight interesting questions that spark mini-discussions amongst users, in effect, generating organic, genuine discussion, much like Twitter. It’s a springboard, of sorts. Perhaps it’s the fact that most of the participants share a similar passion for the media industry.

And remember, this is just a small cross-section of the total answers that my question drew. These are just the best of the 25 or so that I could read and copy fast enough before refreshing my screen. The chat moves very quickly, though Cision regularly records thousands of tweets, all organized across the “#journchat” hashtag, for the ten or so questions Sarah asks each week, so you can always get a copy of the transcript.

All in all…

Through this experience, I learned that twitterchats are an excellent opportunity to:

• Make valuable contacts in the media industry by demonstrating expertise and value
  
• Crowd-source answers on questions you may have, from a pool of experienced professionals
  
• Have some fun with like-minded career folk!

@Journchat takes place every Monday from 7-10pm, CST. Learn more about @Journchat at: http://journchat.info.

I encourage you all to try it for yourself, and see what you think. I’ll be back next week. Will you?

What have your experiences been with Twitter chats like Journchat? Useful? Useless? I’d like to hear your thoughts. Join the discussion and comment below.