Social media and journalism: S.O.S. or key to a bright future?

(Photo courtesy @Scott_Malish)

By Scott Malish, Matt Basford, and Katherine Cantor

Last night we attended MediaBistro’s “Journalists and Social Media” event, a panel discussion on how social media platforms are impacting journalism both from an editorial and financial perspective. The panel included some of the top minds on the front lines of the topic, including Shirley Brady, community editor for BusinessWeek.com, Jay Rosen, author of PressThink and NYU professor, Andy Carvin, senior strategist for the NPR social media desk, and Rachel Sklar, blogger of all trades and former Huffington Post editor.

The discussion focused on a variety of areas. What is each panelist (or their publication) doing with social media? What are their favorite social media platforms? How are publications/organizations monetizing their social media efforts? What does success look like? Each panelist gave an interesting and unique perspective; here’s a quick recap:

Andy Carvin – NPR

• Andy leads NPR’s social media desk (yes, there’s an entire desk focused on community engagement through social media). His mission is to figure out ways to utilize social media channels to work with the public and improve NPR’s editorial content. Notable examples of engagement are getting NPR’s content crowdsourced online or using online audiences as sources or story leads.

• Andy’s favorite social media platform right now is Twitter (spoiler alert, it was everyone’s favorite). Andy has used Twitter to uncover voting irregularities on election day, find the very first eye witnesses of the Hudson River plane crash a few weeks ago, and discover interesting stories on a new special report called “100 Days: On the Road in Troubled Times.”

• On the topic of success, Andy doesn’t fret that engagement so far only ranges in the tens of thousands of people, as opposed to millions of people who historically have read or listened to traditional media. As he puts it, having 10,000 follow you on Twitter carries the potential for your content to be rebroadcasted and shared by hundreds of other networks of followers. In a nutshell, having a million people read your work – pretty powerful. Having 10,000 passionate people willing to spread your message further – really powerful.

Shirley Brady – BusinessWeek

• Shirley’s job is to find new ways to increase reader engagement with BusinessWeek content and online properties. She gave a huge kudos to executive editor John Byrne, who has helped reinvigorate the BusinessWeek staff with a passion for connecting with readers via social media. In fact, social media is so pervasive at the publication, it’s part of their performance reviews (thinking of new ways to engage with readers).

• BusinessWeek has been on the front lines of letting readers participate in the story process, including assigning at least one reader-contributed story idea to a BusinessWeek reporter. Check them out here.

• One interesting point she brought up was the fact that apprehension on social media still exists among journalists because the traditional model is based on “put intense effort into one story and move on.” With social media, a story is considered just the start of an ongoing conversation that readers will engage with and participate in.

Jay Rosen – NYU

• As a journalism scholar, Jay brought a different perspective. He spends all of his time studying journalism and trying to figure out ways for the industry to survive.

• He proclaimed that he takes the long view on journalism, and thus can be blunt. In his words, social media is a revolution for the industry in the truest sense of the word: the means of production of changed hands. Presently, the media industry is “in between business models.” He went so far as to say, “there is no business model right now in news.”

• So how do publications evolve? They become intelligent content filters. The web has unleashed a flood of content and information – some good, some bad. The key to success is not just coming up with valuable content, it is becoming an intelligent filter so readers come to you to get the best of that content.

Rachel Sklar – Blogger

• While no stranger to social media, Rachel began the night by saying she believes it has created a “mob mentality” when it comes to consuming news. She’s all for quick and witty blog posts, but respect must be kept for the journalistic process and what’s involved to develop a truly interesting story.

• Rachel explained that while she’s a huge Twitter fan, she also considers every social media platform as on outlet for communicating your perspective. For example, Flickr doesn’t just have to be for photos – you can write insightful captions and include links to your photos to continue the conversation.

• Commenting on the proliferation of social media outlets, Rachel advised that it’s essential to “be a part of the clarity, not the noise.”

What about the important takeaways from the event? Despite coming up with extremely cool social media projects, the media has not figured out how to make money off of it. Instead, there seems to be an understanding that this is the way of the future; cast a wide net and we’ll experiment and figure it out as we go. When someone finally does figure out how to make money off it, we’ll be ready to capitalize on it.

From a PR perspective, we have a great opportunity to help media with their evolution. Pitching stories will have to evolve from “here’s a great trend you should write about” to “here’s a conversation that I think you readers will be excited to participate in, my client has a unique perspective on the conversation, and here is great content (i.e. videos, pictures, online properties) that you’ll be able to incorporate into the story.” And, always remember, don’t just add to the pile of content – we too are intelligent filters.