Friday, February 5th, 2010...3:33 pm
Social media offer news-gathering tools
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
As journalism evolves, re-invents, whichever action verb you’d like, I think we need to pay more attention to how news gathering is changing — or should be changing. Yes, crowdsourcing — when a news organization uses a large group of regular folks to report a story — gets a lot of ink, but I’m not talking about that.
I’m talking about journalists taking full advantage of online tools to gather information. A series of posts Vadim Lavrusik wrote for Mashable illustrates my point. He gathered a bunch of media/journo types, including me, on a private Google Wave and then suggested topics for us to discuss amongst ourselves. We were warned in advance that he’d be quoting us for possible blog posts. (Our Google Wave chat yielded these four posts: journalist of the future, business trends, content trends, media collaboration).
Read the rest of the post at the Nieman Journalism Lab.
I'm Gina Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is studying for a communications Ph.D. I want to see journalism survive. I believe news organizations need to embrace new media, change their thinking, improve their content and innovate. Read more about me 
6 Comments
February 8th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I just read the full post on Nieman and gave a short comment there…but I have another question.
Have you heard of Google Wave being used in the journalism classroom? Given how much you learned from one session interacting with your peers, it might be something to consider.
I recently posted an entry on my blog about the lack of Web 2.0 in the classroom. Google Wave may a great way to teach the possibilities of web-based collaboration.
(The post: http://metaspring.com/blog)
February 10th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
I have not heard of Google Wave in the classroom, although I’m teaching a class in a few weeks on how to use social media as journalistics tools. I plan to include Google Wave in my lesson.
– Gina
February 12th, 2010 at 7:57 am
I think journalism as we know it is under serious assault right now. As bloggers it is OK for us to just report on the things we find on the internet. Its what its for, but news organisations are resorting to these tactics. There must be a place for the professional otherwise, no exaggeration, freedom and democracy are placed at risk.
April 13th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Hi,
I like your article. Social media not only offers news gathering tools, it also offers tools for readers engagement.
I’m a student at Hofstra University majoring in Journalism. We created a website for one of my journalism class.
The Expansion of Social Media: jrnl10.ning.com
I’ll link your article in the site and we really love to see you there….
April 22nd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
It is so interesting!!! I’ve read something of the kind, but this article made me understand much more!
June 1st, 2010 at 6:31 am
Definitely a step into the future. I think Google Wave will receive more and more relevance within the next years.
Leave a Reply