There’s so much information on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook that trying to absorb it can be like trying to drink from a fire hose. Instant updates are great but it’s sometimes difficult to spot the good stuff…
When the Wall Street Journal used Foursquare to report that New York’s Times Square was being evacuated, the location-based social network proved its worth as a tool for journalists. Foursquare, Gowalla and other services let users “check in” at specific…
The Project for Excellence in Journalism recently studied the content of blogs, Twitter and YouTube to get a feel for the relationship between mainstream media sources and social media. Even more specifically, the researchers were able to determine how the…
If you’re reading this post, my guess is you probably already have your own Twitter account, but social media expert Jeff Cutler has some thoughts on what’s good about Twitter as a journalistic tool and what could be better. Tip #1…
Enterprising reporters have always looked beyond the daybook or the local newspaper for stories worth exploring. They’ve browsed bulletin boards, driven around town with their windows down and scoured the Web. And now–perhaps not surprisingly–social media are an increasingly important…
In case you haven’t seen them, here’s a link to the Radio Television Digital News Association ethical guidelines for the use of social media in gathering and disseminating news. The Poynter’s Al Tompkins was one of the architects. We wanted to…
Nikki Burdine is the anchor and producer for the noon and 5 p.m. show at WHAG-NBC25 in Hagerstown, Maryland. She also blogs for RTDNA where she recently posted a description of her experiment with LiveStream during a newscast. It was…
This post is not an anti-Twitter rant, instead it’s a cautionary tale. By now, we’ve all heard stories about newsrooms sending out inaccurate tweets and then paying the price for it. Take the case of WFTV in Orlando, for example,…
As we reported a couple weeks ago, one study estimates that as many as 70 percent of journalists now use social media to do their jobs. They said they were using social media to find sources and information quickly. Chip Mahaney…
I’ll be honest, I don’t really enjoy Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn. Often times keeping up with them feels like just one more chore. But, if you’re going to be a journalist, I think it’s inevitable that you’ll have to get plugged into…
