SoloJourno

Via Media Helping Media:

A guide for the journalist who is new to Twitter but wants to find out how it can help them in their newsgathering and investigative journalism.

This is aimed at helping the sceptical journalist, who dismisses social networking tools, learn how to use them in their daily work.

Anyone who tries this ABC guide and doesn’t end up hooked, involved and contributing probably doesn’t have a news sense and should consider changing careers and looking for another job.

You have turned up at the office and there is nothing in the diary for the day, the prospects for the week ahead look bleak, you’ve rung round your contacts and they have nothing new, the competition is regurgitating the same wires as you and your mind is a blank. As you stare at the computer screen nothing interesting seems to be happening. What do you do?

There are loads of tools out there to help a journalist use Twitter for newsgathering, for this guide I have only touched on a few.

Read the full article.

Via Media Helping Media:

Editorial ethics of balance, impartiality, fairness, objectivity and accuracy are at the heart of all good journalism.

Without these values, some so-called journalists will be pumping out PR and propaganda.

But with so many journalists in traditional media now invading the social networking space and using tools such as Twitter to both find stories and to spread stories, how do editorial ethics stand up in this fast-paced, instant-information world?

The great thing about Twitter is the speed of delivery and publication. It was set up so that people could answer the question “What are you doing?” in a 140 character text message, sent from either a mobile device or a computer.

It’s instant and it is focused. The message is not drowned in unnecessary words. People using Twitter for sending news have to be disciplined. It’s ideal for news headlines. Short, sharp and to the point.

The information atmosphere is now thick with tweets with a richness of subject variety that is often leaving the mainstream media behind.

Some are fairly basic (although no less important for those sending and receiving) such as, “I have had a bad day” and “taking the dog for a walk”, but others, as we have seen in the recent tweeting around the situation in Iran #iranelections, have been stunning in their delivery of information that may not otherwise have been circulated.

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Via PBS Media Shift:

Twitter’s role in the Iranian election aftermath leaves no doubt about its power as a global, real time, citizen-journalism style news wire service, along with a tool for facilitating dissent, while countering the view of Twitter as simply a zone for egotistical banality. But it also highlighted Twitter’s role as a platform and content generator for traditional media outlets, along with some of the key dilemmas being faced by professional journalists in the Twittersphere.

I’ve been researching the ways in which journalists and traditional media outlets are using Twitter and exploring the ethical dilemmas raised by the clash of the private and the public for journalists in the sphere via interviews with Australian, US and South African journalists. And, while I’m convinced Twitter is now a vital journalistic tool for both reporting events and breaking down barriers between legacy media and its audiences, there are still multiple questions around professional journalists’ activities on Twitter that require thoughtful, open debate.

While many journalists recognize Twitter’s power as a reporting tool, some news organizations are still reluctant to embrace it while others have issued rules restraining their writers’ use of the service. In this third installment of my Mediashift series on the intersection of journalism and Twitter, I’ll attempt to determine the rules of engagement for tweeting journalists.

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Via Mashable:

With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times, journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn’t mean having a class on FacebookFacebookFacebook or TwitterTwitterTwitter, which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.

And though many professors are still experimenting and learning how these tools can be used, below are the 10 ways journalism schools are currently teaching students to use social media. Please share in the comments others that you have found to be important and effective as well.

Read the full article.