Are TMZ and Twitter Trumping the Times? A Reader's Perspective on the Role of Social Media in News Reporting - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

While visiting with a major news organization last week to discuss how women use social media I was asked to take a detour in my topicMy contact asked quotCan we talk about IranquotI39m not an expert in international affairs or in newsgathering for that matter but the question of how Twitter factored in relaying news from politically hardtoreach places was top of mind with the network Later in the week the surreal death of Michael Jackson also put social media front and center of the discussion of how news reporting is changingThe online Hollywood gossip blog TMZ httpwwwtmzcom reported Jackson39s death before most traditional media organizations could confirm it One could argue that these organizations lagged because they have more stringent standards of confirming news before releasing it to the benefit of the reader Later ridiculously false perhaps even maliciously false reports across social media outlets of Jeff Goldblum39s and Harrison Ford39s deaths didn39t exactly reflect well on news a la social network But you do have to ask the question what39s happening to news Are Tweeters supplanting beat reporters Has the old method of news collection proven rustyquotCould we say that TMZ is a hybrid of the worst of tabloid journalism with some of the best practices of traditional and new mediaquot asked Gena Haskett one of our Research Education and Academia editorsKurt Andersen said about TMZ39s Jackson scoop in The New York TimesAmong many journalists quotthere39s still this residual but not yet vestigial instinct to think 39Oh it39s just TMZ let39s wait for The Associated Press or The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times before we can say it39s truequot he said adding quotI don39t think in say five years that will be the casequotFive years seems like seconds to traditional journalists and an eternity to bloggers Last year the Omnicom PR firm Brodeur released a study that revealed a huge dependency of traditional news outlets on the blogosphere with over 75 percent of journalists reporting blogs quotas helpful in giving them story ideas story angles and insight into the tone of an issuequotBlogHer Contributing Editor Anaiis Flox who writes OMG OMG OMFG a socialmedia commentary blog wrote a fantastic piece from the blogger side More specifically from the bloggers who unwittingly feed scoops to unplugged journos for no creditShe writes of a blogging friend who sparked an LA Times story and was linked to but not credited with a storymaking quote he received from a source The LA Times reporter who used the quote credited the comment as quothaving appeared on 39another blog post39quotFlox reached out to Journalism professor Jay Rosen a prominent advocate of the role of social media in news reporting about the incidentquotIt happens all the time he said It sucksquotHe referred Flox to the site Can I Get a Link Please a notrecentlyupdated clearinghouse for tips disseminated by mainstream media that were not properly credited to blog sources He also agreed that sucky as it might be there really is no universal standard for properly crediting bloggersTwitter39s role in Iran certainly marks a corner turned toward crediting bloggers universally if not individually but I don39t think that this recognition threatens the importance of traditional beat reporters But rather than be the scoop sources they will be the verifiers of news aggregators in effect who will sort out the degree of veracity behind reports and create an official record A beat will still be a geographic area industry or sector where the reporter39s collection of grassroots and quotofficialquot sources will have to include the grassroots online A reporter will still be obsessed with facts but will have to hone the skill of extracting them from a series of more granular and relevant but perhaps less contextual or even truthful sourcesBlogHer News and Politics Editor Erin Kotecki Vest an expatriot of broadcast news and incessant Twitterer said to me recently that the art of news scoops has changed In the past breaking news required physically being in the right place at the right time Now breaking news about tapping the most immediate sources Responding to criticism of CNN39s coverage of the opposition to Iran39s presidential election results which was rampant enough on Twitter that it elicited a hash tag CNNfail Kotecki Vest defended the network and her former mediumquotCNN isn39t getting its news from Twitter in so much as it39s finally figured out how to continue to gather news in the digital eraquotThink of it this way usually we39d be sitting in a news room making beat calls and listening to a police scanner Running out when we caught wind of something and then talking with whomever we found on the scenequotTwitter is now the scene And you can find people at any given moment involved in any given news story At first CNN was only setting up accounts and answering questions talking about programming amp8230 Now CNN has realized it can use Twitter like a police scanner and go find people at the scene They were calling people I know in DC near or on the Metro within minutes of the train wreck because they were listening to the police scanner called TwitterquotTo CNN39s credit its citizengenerated news site iReports stands as a separate yet distinctly connected brand from which producers may promote the most promising stories and once verified make them CNNcomworthyI think traditional news sources will shift in other ways as well After Jackson39s death we were able to see full tributes interviews with the pop star39s closest friends and colleagues on television and print We may have received first word through social media but chances are we went to our most trusted news sources to verify and seek contextamp8212hear others39 reactions and commentary from entertainment journalists even medical professionals who could help string together informed thoughts as to how or why Jackson died These were the sources I wanted to hear fromThat may be small consolation to legions of trained journalists who have spent years tracking down stories and who are now being shuffled into the roles of fact checker and news scrapbooker but I think it actually elevates their roles and makes them interpreters Those journalists who embrace their new role in this new era of newsgathering stand to remain trusted if they trust their readers This is one reader who wants that relationship to continueAs cofounder and President of Strategic Alliances for BlogHer Jory Des Jardins is an innovator in online advertising women39s media and Internet entrepreneurship Jory can be contacted at jorybloghercomRead all Joryamp8217s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Jory Des Jardin MediaBizBlogger

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Are TMZ and Twitter Trumping the Times? A Reader's Perspective on the Role of Social Media in News Reporting - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

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