SoloJourno

Via Mashable:

Did Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey or even Mark Zuckerberg ever portend that their means of connecting among social circles would be the news du jour in many newsrooms across the country? Social networking sites are some of the newest tools for reporters to use in news gathering, networking and promoting their work. But many newsrooms are fuzzy on the usage.

“It’s very much the issue of the day. Twitter and Facebook have exploded, and you can’t ignore them,” says Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, who gets a call about once a week from a television station or a newspaper with questions on the ethical issues involving the use of social media. She says journalists’ attitudes toward social media tools range from presuming nothing bad can happen to being terrified.

“You don’t want to be on either end,” says McBride. “You don’t want to be necessarily cautious, but you want to be informed.”

In January, McBride worked with the Roanoke Times to help it hammer out newsroom guidelines for using social media tools. The result is The Roanoke Times News Standards and Policies, which deals with five key areas: use as a reporting tool; journalists promoting their own work from the paper; balancing personal and professional; not discrediting the newsroom; and tips and strategies.

“It’s important for the entire newsroom to write that guidance down,” McBride says. “If you don’t write it down, it’s open to distortion.”

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Via PBS Media Shift:

Twitter is continuing to make headlines around the world as it amasses followers. But it’s also making an impact on the newsmakers themselves. Journalists are invading the space at a rapid pace and learning to report live, crowdsource stories and engage with a whole new audience…in 140 characters or less.

It may not be revolutionary — many journalists view the micro-blogging platform as just another tool in their kitbag — but it is changing journalistic practice and raising important questions about ethics and professionalism. In fact, one of the key contemporary journalistic dilemmas — how to define or redefine objectivity in the social media age — is being played out live via tweets.

Part one of this investigation into tweeting journos was based on interviews with 25 journalists (mostly Australian) and informed by my own experience on the platform. In the aftermath of that article, I received many responses from journalists (and media outlets) via Twitter who also wanted to make a contribution. Their willingness to engage in debate on the issues and eagerness to participate in subsequent stories highlighted for me the significance and timeliness of this research, so I’ve decided to turn this two-part Mediashift series into a comprehensive trilogy.

In part two, I’ll discuss the impact of Twitter on daily reporting and its challenges to traditional journalistic identity and professionalism as the private and the public spheres merge, further blurring the line between reporting and opinion.

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In the pre-internet era of television and radio, news stations could get away with 5-minute traffic reports that may or may not have covered the area the viewer was concerned about. Nowadays, no one has the patience to sit through a broadcast; they want to log on to the web, find the traffic alerts that affect them and be on their way.

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The Digital Journalist: June 2009

Feature article/gallery: Maggie Steber: Native Americans by Marianne Fulton.

Maggie Steber had certainly been aware of the native tribes growing up in Austin, Texas, both by proximity and family. She is one-quarter Cherokee but was not raised with any connection to tribal traditions.

Read the full issue.

Via Mashable:

Very often, when I’m engaging people on Twitter, I think of my undergrad journalism professor, a crusty but kindly man named Charlie Ball.

“Class!” Charlie would bark at all of us, and our fingers would collectively pause over the keyboards of the electric typewriters that passed for a journalism lab 20 years ago. Charlie would wave an unfortunate someone’s liberally marked-up news manuscript in our direction and bellow, “This is what I mean! Never use a 10-cent word when a nickel word will do!”

What Charlie meant by that is that news journalism works best when it’s simple and direct, at least in the story’s lead sentences. And simplicity (and other tenets of good journalism — like brevity, and clarity, and immediacy) are now cornerstones of how many businesses, brands and individuals communicate on Twitter.

Here’s how some of the mantras from my undergrad days now inform the best tweets.

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