This was a presentation I gave to George Hoff’s multi-platform journalism class at Centennial College. For all of you who are already blogging, tweeting and Facebooking (or Linked-inning) this is old-hat. But for the journalism newbie, students, etc. this might be useful.
Blogs, Facebook, Twitter: Using social media as a journalist
Most journalists should be active in one or more social media tools. Not only because of the benefits but at least to understand how these tools work and how they can be used in journalism.
Personally I use these social media tools to generate story ideas, improve my profile, gain exposure, network and gather news.
1. Blogs
Probably the most time-consuming but the one that has the most potential reward. I’ve listed some great examples of journalists who use blogs to great effect.
Mathew Ingram
Former communities editor Globe & Mail, now at tech blog GigaOm. Mathew was a great advocate for social media/web 2.0 at Globe. He’s now at the frontline of tech reporting with GigaOm.
David Akin
Canwest Parliamentary correspondent, uses social media to enhance day-to-day work. Note how David has used Twitter, Facebook, etc. on his blog to give you a sense of how active he is on social media.
Corey Mintz
Corey’s blog is very off-the-cuff but gives his readers great personal insights into his process, outtakes from his column. It shows off his personality, and creates a great relationship with his readers.
What do these blogs all have in common? They extend a personal brand, they give you more insight into the person behind the work, it’s a platform for writing, ideas, stories that might not fit in a traditional media format (newspapers, magazines, wire stories, etc.
Blogs and traditional media
Blogs do things well that traditional media don’t: opinion, curation, aggregation. It’s why we at the Post really like them. We probably run 10+ blogs. Here are a few examples from the Post.
Full Comment
A blog that’s home for our opinions/columnists/editorials. Started because the Post saw a gap in right-wing commentary/blogging in Canada. As a result Full Comment has become very popular among this comunity. The blog gets lots of comments, thousands of page views a day. More importantly, we’ve got tons of buy in from our more senior writers AND younger writers.
Posted
Our news blog lets us experiment and do things and chase stories that we wouldn’t traditionally be able to do. Our blog is a lot less rigid than our normal story pages, so we can do things like embed videos and maps, add more links, images, etc. Also, it’s a good repository for off-kilter stories non-traditional news, etc.
Many other outlets do something similar. A few good examples, the NY Times’ City Room blog, NPR’s the Two Way.
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