Socialmedia.biz

Social journalism: Community building through social networks

Here’s the slide presentation I gave yesterday at the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association Summit of newspaper publishers and ad managers. My talk turned out to be 80 minutes long.

A half dozen newspaper executives thanked me for the presentation afterward, so the message of change is resonating in some quarters. The question is whether enough publishers will have the courage to turn their battleships into speedboats and green-light the wholesale experimentation needed to help newsroom journalists engage with their communities.

So far, no media companies have contacted Socialmedia.biz for consulting work (yes, we’re very busy with clients in other sectors), so I’m doubtful. Continue reading →

I‘m working with the vaunted Poynter Institute to put together an online class for senior newspaper executives on how to use social media in the newsroom.

One of our goals here at Socialmedia.biz is to cut across silos to get marketing people, journalists, businesses and strategists all talking to and learning from each other about creative uses of social media. In the end, we’ll all benefit from best practices, regardless of whether they originated in a newsroom, a startup or a blogger’s home office.

For the Knight Digital Media Center program conducted through the Poynter, I’ll likely be giving a webinar and taking part in online instruction around how journalists are already using the tools of social media. So we’d love to see some specific examples of how you’re using social media (aside from blogs), or examples of how other sites are using it in a way that could be applied to news sites.