SOCIAL JOURNALISM

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Evolving Media

Radio stations: 4,400

1960Mass Media, Matures

Magazine titles: 8,400

5.4 Billion pages indexed by Yahoo!:

Magazine titles:

17,300

TV channels per home: 82.4

Internet broadcast stations:

25,000+

2006Mass Media, Evolves

TV channels per home: 5.7

Radio Stations: 13,500.

Slide Credit: Yahoo

Headlines and social content love to scream “THE MEDIA IS DYING.”

Traditional media is not dying. It’s changing.

Despite naysayers, radio wasn’t the death of newspapers. And television wasn’t the death of newspapers or

radio.

“Looking down is the new looking up.”

- Katie Rosman, WSJ

So what is traditional media’s role in social?

MSM or “traditional” media are launch pads for viral content.

Case Study: @InvisibleObama

@InvisibleObama was mentioned by scores of press, growing the account.

At it’s highest, up to 68,000 followers.

"Big media has always been the way things blow up from the grassroots into the culture,”

- BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith

"But we don't get to decide what goes viral.”

- Ben Smith

"Are we reporting in an echo chamber? To a certain extent that is what we are

doing – but that doesn't mean it is without value. That's not so different from traditional journalism – ‘finding

interesting information and publishing about it.’ ”

- Len De Groot, a lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley.

Case Study: Shashank Tripathi aka @comfortablysmug

6500 Followers

How fast does a tweet travel?

Tripathi's claim about the New York Stock Exchange was shared nearly 650 times, during the height of the storm, largely because journalists and others with powerful credibility carried it across

their Twitter accounts.

“The reach of Tripathi's single tweet on the NYSE was so powerful that the

National Weather Service repeated it, which then allowed it to make its way to the Weather Channel and CNN. Within an

hour, the national press was reporting this completely made-up statement as

fact.”- Heidi Moore, The Guardian

The Blame Game

“The truth is, Tripathi had a relatively small niche on Twitter. His influence would have been limited had not journalists on Twitter been desperate for information to

share, regardless of provenance.”

- Heidi Moore, The Guardian

“The decision to publish Tripathi's information was made by journalists,

even when his persona and the nature of the information called for

skepticism.”

-Heidi Moore, The Guardian

The Responsibility of the Press in Social Tripathi, as an internet troll, was completely in character,

and he had no responsibility to the public. But journalists do have that responsibility – and so, if Tripathi's silly tweets

made it into the national press, it is the national press that is, at heart, to blame for not protecting journalistic

standards as well as they should. It is a matter of a few minutes to call a spokesperson or check a live camera, and that is what journalists get paid to do. Producers or editors should not rush information to air or print until those calls

have been made, and answered.

-Heidi Moore, The Guardian

The New Role of Journalists in Social

“When Twitter pronouncements make it to TV, the web or papers, it is journalists who are the

gatekeepers who allow that. Even in the internet age, when information is easier to obtain,

individual judgment counts: judgment on who to trust, the character of sources, knowing their

agendas and history.”

-Heidi Moore, The Guardian

Now, the Good News.

1. Job creation: social media reporters.2. Job need: ombudsman.3. Power to break a story like never before.4. Power to push a story further.5. Filing limitations have been decimated. 6. A byline has never been so powerful.

Media Twitterati• @Moorehn• @antderosa• @thematthewkeys• @lou_dubois• @thestalwart• @brianstelter• @katz• @morningmoneyben• @nytjim• @chrisgeinder• @Darrenrovell• @danamo• @carr2n• @Chanders

• @JeffJarvis• @JonathanWald• @ClaraJeffrey• @Xeni• @reformedbroker• @buzzfeedandrew• @Karaswisher• @benparr

Follow them. Tweet Smarter.

Sources• http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/

2012/10/21/twitter-media-invisibleobama-binders/1641967/

• http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/193865/whose-fault-is-it-that-shashank-tripathis-lies-about-hurricane-sandy-spread/

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/31/superstorm-journalists-check-twitter-troll