Social media | NPR Ethics Handbook. Just as we do in the “real” world, we identify ourselves as NPR journalists when we are working online. So, if as part of our work we are posting comments, asking questions, tweeting, retweeting, blogging, Facebooking or doing anything on social media or other online forums, we clearly identify ourselves and that we work for NPR. We do not use pseudonyms when doing such work. NPR journalists may, in the course of their work, “follow” or “friend” Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and other social media sites created by political parties and advocacy groups. But we do so to monitor their news feeds, not to become participants, and we follow and friend sites created by advocates from all sides of the issues. It’s as basic a tool as signing up to be on mailing lists used to be. If in their personal lives NPR journalists join online forums and social media sites, they may follow the conventions of those outlets and use screen names that do not identify who they are.
Political Journalism, Social Media and the Election. Four speakers debated the future of political journalism at Montclair State University on Monday. On Monday, Montclair State University invited four experienced speakers to try and make sense of the changing landscape of the news media in the 21st century. The speakers were: • Jonathan Alter, political columnist for Bloomberg. • Robert George, editorial writer for the New York Post. • Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science and law at Montclair State University. • Timothy O’Brien, executive editor for the Huffington Post. Throughout the debate, moderator Merrill Brown, director of the university’s School of Communication and Media, asked the speakers about the impact the traditional news media and social media played in the recent presidential election. The following is a selection of the speakers responses. What kind of impact did the media play in the 2012 presidential election? “But that world is gone.
O’Brien: “I think ... the media [covering] campaigns is a big echo chamber. How a Journalist Uses Social Media. Ethics, Social Media Discussed at LA Journalism Conference. (L-R) Dan Evans, Jeff Wald, Alice M. Walton, SPJ LA pres.,4th Dist. LA Councilman Tom LaBonge, SPJ LA member and Frank Mottek, KNX and past SPJ LA pres. Long before Social Media and the Internet took off, budding and seasoned journalists were bound by strict rules like, “attribution before assertion, get three sources to confirm facts and when in doubt, leave it out.” At the 2012 SPJ Spring conference at the Hilton, Universal City, print, TV and radio journalists gathered over the weekend to learned what’s new and what’s next. One of the keynote speakers was Glendale New-Press Editor Dan Evans, who reminded all journalists at the conference to double check your facts; as we continue our need for speed, there’s also need for accuracy.
“I want people to give real thought to what they do, and why they do it,” Evans said. Evans also observed that Social Media has had good and bad impact on journalism. Alice M. Continued on the next page. Nick Friedell (ESPNChiBulls) Craig Kanalley (ckanal) Nicholas Confessore. Nicholas Confessore is a New York-based political reporter at The New York Times. He led the paper’s coverage of super PACs, campaign finance issues, and political fundraising during the 2012 presidential campaign.
Previously, he wrote about New York state politics and government for the Metropolitan Desk. He has also worked in the Brooklyn and City Hall bureaus of The Times. Before joining The Times in 2004, Mr. Confessore was an editor at The Washington Monthly and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. He began his career as a staff writer at The American Prospect.
He was part of a team of reporters whose coverage of the downfall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting and the Sigma Delta Chi award for deadline reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists. Mr. Newswire | a social network for independent journalists. Is Twitter good or bad for political journalism? With the Republican National Convention getting underway in Florida this week, the volume of political coverage is likely to explode, and therefore so is the volume of posts to Twitter and other social networks — something that was much more of a niche phenomenon during the last election campaign in 2008. While posting to Twitter was commonplace on the various candidate buses and at political events at that time, a political reporter for BuzzFeed says “now Twitter is the bus.”
As a recent post at Politico noted, the hyper-connected and real-time nature of the political cycle now means that stories can emerge and get circulated almost everywhere with lightning speed, and that has changed the nature of the game. But is it good or bad for journalism? The Politico piece, about an incident on Friday involving presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, calls it the “21-minute news cycle.”
Political brush fires can erupt within minutes Irrelevant stories also burn out faster. Social media gradually dethroning print press in Saudi Arabia. Experts Weigh In on Social Media’s Impact on Journalism. Earl Butz, the United States Secretary of Agriculture in 1976, made obscene, racist remarksin front of entertainer Pat Boone and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard acommercial flight to California following the Republican National Convention. Dean, who wasworking for Rolling Stone at the time, used the remark in a piece and attributed it to an unnamedcabinet officer.
Eventually, New Times magazine revealed that Butz had indeed made the remark, forcing him toresign. Nearly 36 years later, Bob Salladay, a senior editor at California Watch and the Center forInvestigative Reporting, was sitting on a train Jan. 19, 2012 with Santa Ana City Councilmember Michele Martinez. Martinez was speaking on the phone and Salladay began tweetingwhat she was saying, including that he was “99 percent sure it was Michele Martinez.” Radio, television and Internet revolutionized journalism in the 20th century.
Sreenivasan agreed. “It has become part of our culture,” he said. Craig Kanalley: The Problem With the Media's Social Media Addiction. Earlier this year, a study found that social media is more addicting than alcohol and cigarettes. Addictions can be dangerous. They can threaten our relationships with others and overall well-being. No one is more addicted to social media right now than the media. Arianna blogged about this in March, when she wrote that the media's obsession with social media had reached "idol-worshipping proportions. " I'd argue the addiction has only gotten stronger, as journalists live tweeted seemingly every word of the first presidential debate last week, helping set a new record for volume of tweets in the process.
Let's take a step back. Fact is, if you're a journalist, and you don't use Twitter or Facebook, you're a rare breed these days. Now, that alone is not such a bad thing. The problem lies in over-reliance on social networks, obsession with them, and over-dependency. It's troubling for several reasons. Can 140 characters alone tell an effective story? As Arianna wrote (emphasis mine): Conclusion. How Social Media is Replacing Traditional Journalism as a News Source [Infographic] Social Media Etiquette for Journalists: The Rules Have Changed. Social Media Guidelines for Student Journalists | The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The Cronkite School encourages participants in its professional programs to make use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which are valuable reporting tools and promotional and distribution channels for our content. To ensure the highest journalistic standards in these programs, participants must abide by the following standards for social media use drawn from The Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. As stated in the SPJ Code of Ethics, journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.
Actions that call into question a journalist’s ability to report fairly on an issue harm not only that journalist but his or her news organization and fellow journalists. Participants in the Cronkite School’s professional programs are bound by these standards in their use of social media regardless of whether they are at work: 10 tips for teaching journalists how to effectively use social media. When I first wrote about Twitter in September 2007, I got emails from journalists who said I was highlighting a tool that would never have journalistic application. A lot has changed since then. There’s now a greater willingness to embrace Twitter and other social media tools — or to at least see their potential. As more tools emerge, we need to be open to teaching others how to use them and how to integrate them into our workflow.
I’ve put together some tips for teaching social media based on teaching I’ve done here at Poynter. While the tips are mostly geared toward journalism educators, journalists who are coaching their colleagues may also find them useful. 1. About how often do you use social media for your reporting? These questions will give you a better sense of how to frame your session. 2. 9.
The Missouri School of Journalism’s Jen Lee Reeves will be teaching a News University Webinar on this topic on Thursday at 2 p.m. CNN’s head of social news: Twitter forces journos to report the news better. CNN accounted for about 13% of all social media mentions, according to trend analytics firm Trendrr earlier this year. That’s impressive. Cable News Network is one of the largest news networks in the world, so it needs to be at the forefront of news innovation by adapting the changing nature of reporting. Today’s current news climate requires all news organisations to have a social media strategy. CNN is very active on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram. Its main Twitter account boasts more than six-million followers, placing it among the top 100 biggest accounts in the world. The network’s reporters actively involve Twitter in their reporting process. There are currently one-million registered contributors providing content for the cable network’s iReport platform, which allows every day readers to report the news.
Memeburn: What are your thoughts on social media’s influence on journalism? MB: Is Twitter bad for journalism? How Truth and Lies Spread on Twitter. Hurricane Sandy was a huge moment for New York City. It was also a huge moment for how we think about social media. For many in the superstorm’s path up the Eastern Seaboard, social networks quickly became an essential source of information from news organizations, civic organizations, and friends and family. As power went out in lower Manhattan on Monday evening, many residents turned to Twitter and Facebook (FB) on their smartphones to learn exactly how the hurricane was impacting their neighborhoods. CBS (CBS) estimates three and a half million tweets with the hashtag #Sandy during the height of the storm; popular photo-sharing service Instagram saw 10 photos of Hurricane Sandy uploaded per second. As vital information flooded Twitter and Facebook, misinformation soon bubbled to the top.
Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst and the campaign manager of Christopher R. Twitter proved effective not just as a newswire, but as a medium for distributed fact-checking. 'Horizontal media' - how social media has changed journalism. In a recent article titled “The people formerly known as the audience”, The Economist looked at how social media technologies have changed how we gather, filter and distribute news. Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, has termed this change “horizontal media”. Thanks to the rise of social media, news is no longer gathered exclusively by reporters and turned into a story.
Instead, it emerges from an ecosystem in which journalists, sources, readers and viewers exchange information. Today it’s quick and easy for anyone to share links with large numbers of people via Facebook or Twitter and without the involvement of a traditional media organisation. With this in mind it was interesting to see The Economist’s graphic about the traffic drivers to the main US news websites (see graphic above). Typically around 20-30% of visitors to the websites of big news organisations still come from Googles search engine or its news site, Google News. Ray Brescia: Sandy, Social Media and Journalism's New Frontier. I'm not exactly sure when on Monday night that it happened, but sometime around 10 p.m. I realized that my Twitter feed and Facebook page were delivering far more interesting, consistent and complete coverage of Sandy's havoc than the televised news ever could. By now, the trope that is hurricane coverage has gotten tired: the intrepid, squinting, plastic-coated newsie standing on a shore as the waves rise and fall all around.
We've seen it all before. For as long as there has been television news broadcasts, it would seem, this scene has replayed itself again and again. But the picture these images consistently present is the same, even though the names of the storms and location may change. What's worse, because the television news always has to guess where the action will be, the coverage is fixed, static, like watching a football game through a camera trained on a small patch of grass around the 35-yard line. Facebook and Social Networks | The Transition to Digital Journalism. Beginning in the early 2000s, a new form of online social interaction emerged - social network websites. Social networks provided people with a way to set up a personal page or profile to which they could post updates on what they were doing, while also keeping track of the activities of family, friends and colleagues. People also can engage in group activities online and display feeds of information on their home pages - everything from personal photo slideshows and videos to musical playlists and calendars to weather reports and news stories.
The applications that allow social network users to display this information on their profile pages are called widgets. Some of the early social networks were Friendster, started in 2002, and Tribe, launched in 2003. By 2008, 35 percent of adult Internet users had created a profile on a social network, quadruple the percentage in 2005, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey in December 2008. Journalists and Social Networks Google+
The Influence of Social Media on Journalism. Social Media By RM Downey, Published October 26, 2012 Today we have two great videos (one interview, one TEDx talk) on Sree Sreenivasan who is a digital media Professor, including social media and digital entrepreneurship at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Sree covers a variety of topics on using Social Media to your advantage in journalism and marketing and some of the do’s and don’ts that most people learn the hard way. Key Benefits of Social Media on Journalism: Helps find trendsBuilds a deeper connection with your audienceBrings attention and traffic which can turn into direct revenuebuild your brand and long term trust “Social media is one of the biggest things to affect journalism since the rise of the internet itself,” says sreenivasan, who explains why social media is useful, and how to use it effectively, and why creating helpful, unique, timely content is essential.
“Every startup needs a social media strategy,” he says. Via Wamda & Ted X. Social media reshapes journalism. 55% Of Journalists Worldwide Use Twitter, Facebook To Source News Stories [STUDY] How Reuters journalists use social media. Part 1: Katie Couric on Social Media and Real-Time Journalism. Part 2: Katie Couric on Social Media and Real-Time Journalism.