You’re working on an exclusive story for tonight and the Web and social media team wants a piece of it, hours before air. Should you share? If you thought that question had been laid to rest years ago, think again. In some newsrooms, the answer still is, “It depends.” Brandon Mercer, news director at KTXL [...]
This isn’t a new idea, but it’s remarkably successful and so, worth revisiting. Local television stations that are smart about using #hashtags on Twitter can build their audience and amplify their coverage. That’s obvious when it comes to big events like Hurricane Sandy. By one count, there were 3.5 million tweets with the hashtag #sandy [...]
What does social media have to do with journalism? Everything, says Bea Chang, social media manager at KARE-TV in Minneapolis. Facebook is one of the best ways to expand the reach of your stories if you know how to use it. And Twitter has become the new scanner, says KARE news director Jane Helmke, with [...]
It’s a long way from the “Boys on the Bus.” Political reporters today have more information at their fingertips than a whole newsroom could provide not that long ago. Here are a few you might want to download, if you haven’t already. Ad Hawk, free from the Sunlight Foundation, uses sound recognition technology to quickly [...]
Here we go again. Two more journalists have learned lessons the hard way. If they thought their personal lives were somehow separate from their professional lives, they’ve had to think again. And while the two cases were vastly different, the outcome was the same. Both journalists lost their jobs. Lesson 1: What you post on [...]
CNN is taking a lot of grief today, and deservedly so. The network’s well-respected Twitter feed for breaking news, @CNNbrk, posted the first tweet on the Supreme Court’s decision on President Obama’s health care law at 10:08 a.m. Unfortunately, it was absolutely wrong. The post followed an on air report by CNN’s Kate Bolduan, who [...]
If blogging is just writing, why is it so hard to do well? Maybe because it’s not just writing, or at least it shouldn’t be. Journalists who ought to know the basics seem to struggle with blogging as much as anyone else. They aren’t sure what to write about or how to make it interesting. [...]
Beginning a new year by looking backward is a time-honored tradition among procrastinators and (true confession here) I can procrastinate with the best of them when I’m not on deadline. So herewith, a look back at the posts that got the most traffic at NewsLab in 2011, in case you missed any or would like [...]
Who’s counting? Everybody, it seems, at this time of year. Everywhere you look, there’s a top 10 list for the year’s best and worst, so why should journalism be different? And why reinvent the wheel? Instead of creating our own 2011 rundown, we’ve put together a meta-list with a few additions and comments. This was [...]
Let’s say you’ve been a journalist for a while but you feel a bit out of the loop when it comes to using social media and multimedia. OK, not just out of the loop–totally overwhelmed. And you’re worried some kid just out of college is going to steal your job one day because they have [...]
We all know by now that social media are meant to be, well, social. It’s not enough to post links on Twitter and Facebook to something you’ve written and consider the job done. What you really want is for people to retweet, like and comment on your posts, to take advantage of the multiplier effect of social media. [...]
Facebook is giving me a headache but not for the reason you may think. Sure, it’s annoying when services you’ve grown accustomed to shake things up for no apparent reason (see the new Delicious, for example). But that’s their prerogative and we’d better get used to it. “Facebook will always be changing,” says Vadim Lavrusik [...]
Andy Carvin of NPR is a Twitter rock star. His social media reporting during the Arab Spring has made @acarvin a go-to source for information about uprisings from Tunisia to Yemen. He describes his role as that of a “Twitter anchor,” vetting sources, verifying information and passing it along to the public. Carvin’s 55,000 plus Twitter [...]
You already know that prospective employers are looking for journalists with social media skills. The Statesman-Journal in Salem, Oregon, certainly is. Executive Editor Bill Church recently advertised an opening for a “talented reporter with high digital IQ.” If you’re talented, aggressive, responsible, innovative, socially adept, digitally awesome and perpetually energized, you’ll fit in just fine [...]
When an earthquake hits, as happened on the East Coast this week, or when a major storm comes ashore as appears likely with Hurricane Irene this weekend, YouTube can be an invaluable source of video. Since just about everyone these days has a camera on hand at all times, YouTube and other video sharing services [...]
Twitter got a ton of free publicity this week by releasing #TfN, a newsroom guide for Twitter. “We want to make our tools easier to use so you can focus on your job,” the guide says, “finding sources, verifying facts, publishing stories, promoting your work and yourself—and doing all of it faster and faster all [...]
Many journalists already use their smartphones as news gathering and publishing tools, but Mark Briggs of KING5.com in Seattle and the blog Journalism 2.0 says mobile devices can do so much more. “Few reporters use smartphones as a research device,” Briggs says–a missed opportunity, in his opinion, because smartphones are “location aware.” As an example, [...]
Want more proof that social media are great reporting tools? Look no farther than “Keys to the Castle” an investigative story Jace Larson reported for KUSA in Denver that picked up a 2011 duPont-Columbia Award. The story uncovered a housing scam that victimized people facing foreclosure as well as people looking to rent. As the [...]
If you sometimes think you’re drowning in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the rest, you are not alone. I’m feeling slightly more overwhelmed than usual, myself, after listening to a webinar that was all about helping journalists get control of their social media streams. Maybe that’s because I’ve used some of the tools that were mentioned [...]
Forgive me for tooting my own horn, but I’m pleased to announce the publication of the second edition of my book, Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World, co-authored with Deb Wenger. It’s available now from CQ Press or Amazon, and we hope you’ll check it out. What’s different this time around? The new [...]