MNN - Mother Nature Network

 

One of the reasons I’m so casual about it is that I’ve been hosting Thanksgiving for 14 years now. We do an incredibly traditional Thanksgiving. I don’t switch things up much, and many of the friends and family that come to dinner bring a lot of the food.

 

For those of you who don’t have the holiday cooking and baking down pat yet, though, the New York Times wants to help you out. They have a live help line, in the very modern, new media sense of the term “help line.” This help comes from their experts who are live on Twitter, waiting to answer the questions of people who tweet them with the hashtag #AskNYT.

 

The questions may have to come in the form of 140 characters via Twitter, but the answers are fully flushed on the New York Times Dining and Wine website. Questions about brining, local turkeys, special dietary needs, what a newly widowed man should bring to his neighbors house, and even the safety of cooking a 25-year-old frozen turkey are answered in full.

 

When a question is answered, @NYTdining sends a message through Twitter to the person who asked it informing them their question has been answered with a link to the answer.

 

I don’t know if this is the first year New York Times is doing this, but it’s the first I’ve been aware of it. It’s a great use of social media, isn’t it?