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How journalists are using Twitter and other social media as tools for reporting and publishing the news.
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Journalists Get Social
How social media tools can make life better for editors and writers
For AARPJune 10, 2009
What is social media?
• Content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.
-- Wikipedia
• Platforms for interaction and networking.-- Brian Eisenberg,
FutureNow marketing blog
• Social media is any new web tool or technology that connects people.
-- Matt McDonald, digital marketing strategist in Charleston, S.C.
Where did this stuff come from?
• 2002: Friendster, an early social network.• 2003: MySpace launched. Sold to Rupert Murdoch in
2005 for $580 million.• 2004: Facebook created my Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard
student.• 2004: Photo-sharing site Flickr created as part of a
massively multiplayer online game. Sold to Yahoo in March 2005.
• 2005: YouTube created by 3 former PayPal employees. Sold to Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion.
• 2006: Twitter launched by Evan Williams and Biz Stone, two former Google employees.
Source: Matt McDonald, BrandFlakesforBreakfast.com
Will social media kill Google?
“For the 1st time ever, more people are finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook referrals than via Google. The total number of people coming to my blog is increasing. The percentage of people who find it via Google is declining.”
--Mark CubanEntrepreneur
HDNet chairmanMay 2009
May 2009: Social vs. Search
Facebook drew 82.9 million unique visitors in May, up from 68.5 million in January.
Twitter logged 19.7 million uniques.
Google May uniques: 144.4 million; Yahoo, 135.5 million; MSN, 97.5 million.
source: Compete Web analytics
Will social media kill journalism?
The good old days of journalism
• We wrote, they listened.
• Sources returned our phone calls.
• We controlled both the information and the publishing platform.
The new reality of journalism
• We write: is anyone listening? • Sources still return our phone calls – when
they’re not blogging.• Data is shared; publishing platforms are
cheap and ubiquitous.• Thousands of citizen bloggers cover health
and personal finance news.
What’s the future of journalism?
• “It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure.”
-- Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody
• “The Holy Grail territory … is this: Combine human and machine intelligence, to surface the stuff we need, as communities and individuals, that is trustworthy, reliable, and useful.”
– Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media
Journalists are using Twitter and other social media to:
• Find and cultivate sources.
• Follow news and events in real time.
• Discover story ideas.
• Share scoops and useful information.
• Promote your work – and yourself.
Find and cultivate sources
• Use Facebook and Twitter to find sources, particularly individuals.
• Use their social networks to find others.
• Thank sources publicly, so they’re more willing to feed you good stuff.
Follow news and events
• Use Twitter #hashtags to track specific subjects: #mumbai#swineflu#healthcare #health2.0 #health reform
• Use hashtags to cover meetings remotely: #fakemed is a conference on the global impact of counterfeit meds at the AEI today.
• Get real-time reports from sources, including other science writers.
• Report at the scene from your phone or BlackBerry.
Get story ideas
• Follow people or institutions for story leads.
• Use Twitter and Google trend tools to track what’s hot:
• Tweetstats.com/trends• Twist.flaptor.com• trends.google.com
Share interesting stuff
• Embed URLs, audio, video, or post articles to share information you find new or useful.
• Be generous.
• To minimize your hassle, link your social media sites with RSS feeds or Twitter widgets, or use an app like FriendFeed.
Promote yourself!
• Let others know what stories you’re working on.
• Publicize new work by linking to it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and your personal blog.
• Self-publish via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
• Give people a sense of who you are as a person with photos and personal news.
Thanks to Robin Lloyd, Dan Gillmor, Clay Shirky, Dave Moser, Liz Scherer, David
Bradley, Amy Gahran, Joe Bonner, Leslie Ann Bradshaw, Jay Levy, Denise Graveline, Carl Zimmer, Andrew Revkin, Amy Webb, Sara
Clarke, Ivan Oransky, Craig Stoltz, Jay Rosen, Russ Campbell, Paulo Ordoveza, Joe Neel,
Molly McElroy, Allison Bland….
….. and the many others who have helped me learn about social media.
Questions?
Find these slides at:slideshare.com/nancyshute
Find me at:[email protected]
[email protected]/nancyshute
