Is picking Twitter accounts to follow the same as picking which cable television host to trust? Journalists who’ve reported from the Middle East and relied on Twitter to receive their news say maybe. Read more »
As more and more breaking news comes to us through social media, the task of determining what is true and what isn’t becomes exponentially harder. Storyful says that crowdsourcing is the best way to do this, and so it has opened up its professional verification process. Read more »
Comparing a traditional news story about a recent shooting with a news report from a Reddit user — who pulled together Twitter messages from the perpetrators and victims — provides a glimpse of what a real-time, crowdsourced newsroom of the future might look like. Read more »
In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism — including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human. Read more »
New research about how news is verified through Twitter and a crowdsourced debunking of some fake Wikipedia entries reinforce the point that social networks and online communities can be powerful tools for the real-time verification of events, something that used to take place behind closed doors. Read more »
Some traditional media entities seem to be hoping for a single magic bullet that will cure their revenue problems, but it is more likely success will come from making a number of smaller bets. Unfortunately, large media players don’t tend to be good at that. Read more »
Citizen journalism and social-media tools have made it easier to get information out of countries like Egypt and Syria, but in some cases these reports may not be true. Does that mean citizen journalism is unreliable? No. It just means we need to approach it differently. Read more »
There’s been a lot of debate about whether a Forbes blog post that excerpted and summarized a New York Times story qualifies as journalism or not — but to some extent that’s a red herring. The only question that matters is whether the reader is served. Read more »
A new policy from Sky News bars reporters from posting anything other than work-related content on Twitter, and even forbids them from retweeting anything that doesn’t come from a Sky account. As with so many other similar policies, this completely misses the point of social media. Read more »
A spokesman for the board that oversees the Pulitzer Prize awards for journalism says live reporting of a news event using Twitter would not qualify for a Pulitzer unless it also appeared on a traditional news website. But does that definition fit how journalism works now? Read more »
Imagine citizen journalists could remix radio programs or TV news features simply by copy and pasting text fragments of their manuscripts and closed captions: That’s the idea behind hypermedia, and first tools to make it happen could become available as early as next year. Read more »
A new study of the way information flowed during the Arab Spring uprisings earlier this year paints a fascinating picture of how what some call “news as a process” works, and the roles bloggers, mainstream media and others play during a breaking news event. Read more »
The board that administers the Pulitzer prizes for journalism has changed the criteria for the breaking news category to stress the real-time nature of the reporting involved — which suggests that some day a Pulitzer might be awarded for live-tweeting of a news event. Read more »
Are those who post unverified reports on Twitter playing an important role in the new ecosystem of news, or being irresponsible and indulging in gossip? That question goes to the heart of the idea of news as a process rather than a finished product. Read more »
Those who see Twitter as a powerful tool for real-time journalism have another example of how it can be done: New York Times reporter Brian Stelter has posted a thoughtful account of how he used Twitter to report on the aftermath of a tornado in Missouri. Read more »
As the BBC and other mainstream media outlets try to figure out how to curate and make sense of the “citizen journalism” coming in via social media, they also need to come to grips with the idea that news is now a process, not a product. Read more »
A young editor for Sky News puts his finger on some of the changes that are disrupting the media industry when he describes in a blog post how his job now involves interacting with “a personalized wire service” of more than 2,000 sources via Twitter. Read more »
Is the man who live-tweeted the bin Laden attack a “citizen journalist?” Some argue that he is not, but the reality is that what we call journalism is being unbundled into its component parts, and anyone can now perform some or all of those functions. Read more »
Does Facebook have Twitter envy? The latter has become a platform for real-time journalism, while Facebook is still thought of as a place where friends share photos or play games. Now the social network is reaching out to the media with new resources aimed at journalists. Read more »
