This document discusses the evolving role of traditional media in the age of social media. It notes that while some claim traditional media is dying, it is actually changing and adapting to new technologies. Traditional media still plays an important role in spreading content created by individuals on social media to wider audiences. However, journalists must be careful about fact checking and verifying information spread on social media before reporting on it to avoid spreading misinformation. The role of journalists is now to act as gatekeepers and verify information from social media before it reaches larger audiences.

1. SOCIAL JOURNALISM
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2. Slide Credit: Yahoo
Evolving Media
1960 2006
Mass Media, Matures Mass Media, Evolves
TV channels Magazine titles: TV channels 5.4 Billion pages Magazine
per home: 5.7 8,400 per home: indexed by Yahoo!: titles:
82.4 17,300
Internet
Radio broadcast Radio
stations: stations: Stations:
4,400 25,000+ 13,500.

3. Headlines and social content love to scream
“THE MEDIA IS DYING.”

4. Traditional media is not dying. It’s changing.

5. Despite naysayers, radio wasn’t the death of
newspapers. And television wasn’t the death
of newspapers or radio.

6. “Looking down is the new looking up.”
- Katie Rosman, WSJ

7. So what is traditional media’s role in social?

8. MSM or “traditional” media are launch pads
for viral content.

9. Case Study: @InvisibleObama

11. @InvisibleObama was mentioned by scores
of press, growing the account.
At it’s highest, up to 68,000 followers.

12. "Big media has always been the way
things blow up from the grassroots into
the culture,”
- BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith

13. "But we don't get to decide what goes viral.”
- Ben Smith

14. "Are we reporting in an echo chamber? To a
certain extent that is what we are doing –
but that doesn't mean it is without value.
That's not so different from traditional
journalism – „finding interesting information
and publishing about it.‟ ”
- Len De Groot, a lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at the
University of California-Berkeley.

15. Case Study:
Shashank Tripathi aka @comfortablysmug
6500 Followers

16. How fast does a tweet travel?
Tripathi's claim about the New York Stock Exchange was shared nearly
650 times, during the height of the storm, largely because journalists
and others with powerful credibility carried it across their Twitter
accounts.

19. “The reach of Tripathi's single tweet on the
NYSE was so powerful that the National
Weather Service repeated it, which then
allowed it to make its way to the Weather
Channel and CNN. Within an hour, the
national press was reporting this completely
made-up statement as fact.”
- Heidi Moore, The Guardian

20. The Blame Game

21. “The truth is, Tripathi had a relatively small
niche on Twitter. His influence would have
been limited had not journalists on Twitter
been desperate for information to share,
regardless of provenance.”
- Heidi Moore, The Guardian

22. “The decision to publish Tripathi's
information was made by journalists, even
when his persona and the nature of the
information called for skepticism.”
-Heidi Moore, The Guardian

23. The Responsibility of the Press in Social
Tripathi, as an internet troll, was completely in character,
and he had no responsibility to the public. But journalists do
have that responsibility – and so, if Tripathi's silly tweets
made it into the national press, it is the national press that
is, at heart, to blame for not protecting journalistic
standards as well as they should. It is a matter of a few
minutes to call a spokesperson or check a live camera, and
that is what journalists get paid to do. Producers or editors
should not rush information to air or print until those calls
have been made, and answered.
-Heidi Moore, The Guardian

24. The New Role of Journalists in Social
“When Twitter pronouncements make it to TV,
the web or papers, it is journalists who are the
gatekeepers who allow that. Even in the internet
age, when information is easier to obtain,
individual judgment counts: judgment on who to
trust, the character of sources, knowing their
agendas and history.”
-Heidi Moore, The Guardian

25. Now, the Good News.

26. 1. Job creation: social media reporters.
2. Job need: ombudsman.
3. Power to break a story like never before.
4. Power to push a story further.
5. Filing limitations have been decimated.
6. A byline has never been so powerful.

27. Media Twitterati
• @Moorehn • @JonathanWald
• @antderosa • @ClaraJeffrey
• @thematthewkeys • @Xeni
• @lou_dubois • @reformedbroker
• @thestalwart • @buzzfeedandrew
• @brianstelter • @Karaswisher
• @katz • @benparr
• @morningmoneyben
• @nytjim
• @chrisgeinder
• @Darrenrovell
• @danamo
• @carr2n

28. Follow them. Tweet Smarter.

29. Sources
• http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/21/
twitter-media-invisibleobama-binders/1641967/
• http://www.poynter.org/latest-
news/mediawire/193865/whose-fault-is-it-that-shashank-
tripathis-lies-about-hurricane-sandy-spread/
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/31/su
perstorm-journalists-check-twitter-troll