February 24th, 2008
by
Patrick Thornton
The author of New Media Bytes asks a list-serv of journalists and gets varied responses.
There is no black and white answer - but I think it’s a conversation all newsrooms should be having.
Whenever I want to reconnect with someone, I first look to online social networks, such as Facebook and Linked in. I imagine a host of people use social networks for the very same purpose.
So why shouldn’t journalists?
I posed this question to a list serv that includes several journalists I worked with at my college paper, and some didn’t think too favorably of using social media to find sources.
Here’s some of the responses:
- Journalist Marty Weil: Weil says Linked In can be a great source for finding the right sources and also a good place for generating feature story ideas.
- Journalist Michelle Vranizan Rafter: Rafter uses the service as a virtual Rolodex and also uses the Linked In Answers to find potential sources.
What do you think? Is it time to integrate social media into the news gathering process?
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February 24th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Definitely yes. Twitter especially is one of those things that really helps in catching on to things before they become yesterday’s news. Like this post you’ve got here, I know about it before your RSS subscribers because of Twitter.
Then of course you have the amazing capacity for social media to come out with really quick and useful answers.
I say, if you know how to use it, do!