I came across two posts today that brilliantly spell
out how web 2.0 is a blessing for journalists
Of course, those of you who've spent a lot of time
using social media might be familiar with a lot of this, but the posts summarise
the headlines of just how useful these tools are expertly. And I do wish these
things were more widespread knowledge: it would make our industry more
interesting.
First, Alfred Hermida lets Scott Elliot explain how he
benefits from blogging about his beat.
Scott is a former education reporter with the Dayton
Daily News who's just taken on a new role as columnist for the same paper. He started a blog about his beat, Get on the
Bus, three years ago:
"Here's what I quickly learned - readers are
interested in knowing more about education, particularly the behind the scenes
information or data that is not widely reported. My blog quickly and consistently
became the newspaper's best read blog, even as bunches of new ones launched,
often doubling the page views of the next best read blog..." (full post
here).
Next, I stumbled across Alison Gow's post comparing the
life cycle of a news story web 1.0 with web 2.0 (via one of
Jemima Kiss' tweets). Do check out the full post. Here's Alison's conclusion:
"I had no idea when I started doing this how thin
the 'old' opportunities for investigative stories would look compared to the
tools at our disposal now; it's quite stark really. It drives home just how
important mastering these tools is for journalists as our industry continues to
develop and change."
NB: due to formatting problems on my blog when I first
posted this, I had to delete my original post and retype the text in a new post (changed the text a wee bit in that process).
It's almost too easy to overlook these stories and forget that journalists themselves are learning through this process of using new tech. It's almost too easy to forget that learning matters when journalism is about knowledge ultimately.
Posted by: ashok | September 08, 2008 at 12:37 PM