Journalism

The online-only service, which publishes its work under a Creative Commons license, beat out some of the biggest U.S. newspapers to win the honor for its three-part investigative series “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of.”[read more]

The article was shared on major social networks close to a thousand times, and gathered an impressive reader response of over 500 comments within 24 hours of being posted on The Guardian’s site. For an article on economics, a subject which many consider to be snooze-worthy, these numbers are pretty astounding. How did it happen?[read more]

Journalism schools are creating new programs and courses that incorporate digital skills; such programs/courses come with a large variety of names. “Digital journalism” is the best name based on a three-part evaluation: popular, self-explanatory and precise.[read more]

ereader/shutterstock

Even though the highest growth is happening with young adults, the Baby Boomer generation is also consuming news on social media in growing numbers. Mary Madden reports that “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.”[read more]

As you may have heard by now, The Onion recently became the latest in a string of large news organizations to be attacked and have their Twitter hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. They were able to regain control fairly quickly, but in a surprising twist, they also decided to publish a blog post detailing how their security was breached.[read more]

Although Vine was only released in January, it’s already made an impact in the world of citizen journalism, and it’s easy to see why – its ease of use, length constraints and accessibility make it the perfect platform for people to capture their own news, ready to share it with their friends and family on social media.[read more]

“Curation is another name for editing which is another word for journalism – bringing together lots of info from one place.” This is exactly what a good community manager does as well. By allowing your community to share and discuss topics that are relevant to them, we are acting as curators. That is precisely why we have community guidelines to help us moderate and manage the members, as well as encourage good community behaviour.[read more]

There’s a lot of background chatter lately about brand sponsored content being the death of journalism. It’s true that the traditional financial model that allowed the journalism profession to flourish in the latter decades of the 20th century has been getting slowly chipped away at more or less since the turn of the millennium.[read more]

Controlling how news is reported and disseminated is inextricably linked to power. That's why dictatorships have always censored or removed the free press and run state TV stations with a rod of iron. While much of the western world has moved on from that, media is often controlled by a certain group, making citizen journalism a vital part of the opening up of reporting to everyone.[read more]

Have a communications expert on speed dial. Oh, I already said this, didn’t I? Whenever I repeat this to friends, colleagues, or peers, someone will text me with some smarty pants remark such as, “How quickly do you respond to communication crises?” Have someone on speed dial who has lots and lots and lots of experience with issues and crisis management.[read more]

Choose one newspaper, magazine, or blog that makes a difference in your industry. It can be Wall Street Journal or it can be one of your trade publications. Choose just one. Once a week, comment on one article, blog post, or editorial. After about six weeks, the journalist will feel like he or she is beginning to know you and will call you for a story in the works.[read more]

Like many, I found myself gripped by the real-time reports that poured in on the evening of April 19th. Boston Police were in close pursuit of the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect. Up to this point, I mostly followed the story via @CNN and CNNLive. I noticed however, that some of the most interesting updates were shared via Twitter directly by the Boston Police (@Boston_Police).[read more]

Here's the sad truth: in a time of crises, we thirst for information to quench our frenzied minds. We want this information so badly that we will lower our standards and tune in to real-time and social sourced quasi-journalism. Is this good for the news industry? Does it hurt the network's credibility?[read more]

Is PR over? / shutterstock

If you're a small or mid-sized business trying to position yourself as a thought leader, why waste time trying to get traditional media coverage? You're far better off writing relevant, provocative articles targeted to your ideal customer and promoting them through social media.[read more]

Social media at U of H

This winter, underpaid University of Houston grad students took to social media to promote their cause; this week, the president of the university paid attention, reallocating $1 million to the dean of the department to address concerns about teaching stipends. Here's how the social protest went down.[read more]

eModeration's Blaise Grimes-Viort explains how to successfully claim Google Authorship next to your articles and blog posts using photographic attribution.[read more]

Twitter surge for a hurricane

Users behave differently on different social media platforms. When a news story breaks it moves across social media in different pulses depending on what the news is and how it travels through these platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. Here's a case study that explains a lot about how each social network works.[read more]

facebook/shutterstock

Facebook recently announced a new app called Facebook Home that will launch on April 12th. The app promises to change how people use their phones, letting users put people before apps. HTC and AT&T are also teaming up to sell the HTC First, which will be the first phone to come pre-loaded with Facebook Home.[read more]

industry magazine/flickr

All of my communications and my consumption of content has become digital. The switch finally happened and I didn’t even notice. It started about four years ago when I began following thought leaders, analysts, and bloggers on Twitter.[read more]

When alt-weekly Boston Phoenix went under recently, nobody suspected that the largest political scoop would come from the paper's former political reporter. Here's how it all happened on Twitter.[read more]