Tech Talk 2012
Incorporating Social Media in Journalism
Instruction
Michelle Carr Hassler
College of Journalism and Mass
Communications
mhassler3@unl.edu
Social media/tech tools
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Twitter
RSS
Social bookmarking
Organization – Dropbox & GoogleDocs
Multimedia class blog, which offers resources
and a place where students post story pitches
• Jing for providing audio feedback
Twitter use
 More than 175 million users.
 Up from 58 million in 2009.
 Adding 370,000 a day!
How journalists use it
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Engage audiences, create community.
Connect with people, sources.
Develop personal brands.
Link to their work.
Crowd source content.
Get questions answered.
Provide real time news.
How students can use it
• Following leaders in industry and the
academy. Staying current.
• Connect and network with professionals or
other students.
• Research and find sources.
• Collaborate.
• Study it as a way to distribute news.
• Practice distributing news through Twitter.
Research
• Many intelligent people are tweeting and
willing to share their ideas.
• Insight into the “social” aspects of
communication.
• Gain background for interviewing or writing
• Verify information
• Develop story ideas
Twitter as a news source
• News travels fast.
• Osama bin Laden’s death: 12.4 million tweets
an hour.
• Sense of immediacy.
Live tweet assignment
for capstone multimedia journalism course
• Students have to select an event or speech to
cover live by tweeting about it on the college’s
news site Twitter account.
• After tweeting the story, they have to write a
follow-up story and post that to the college’s
news website.
• Booklet with live tweet assignment
• Rubric for live tweet assignment
How it worked
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Real world examples
Practice assignment
Targeted types of stories
Other reporting tools -- RSS
Live tweeting principles
• Live twitter stream is considered a story – it
needs a beginning, middle and end.
• Use a hashtag. Automatically groups tweets
identified with that hashtag, making topic
search easy.
• How to demonstrate hashtags:
– Twitterfall
– Hootsuite
Live tweeting principles
• Each tweet should cover one point at a time.
• Think subjects, verbs (like headlines).
• Strive to make each an understandable, selfcontained message.
• Be a careful observer and have an eye open
for novel and important information that
might be relevant to your audience.
Live tweeting tips
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Use good grammar.
Punctuate for clarity.
Always be professional.
Avoid using exclamation points, emoticons,
jargon and slang (including LOL)
Ethics still apply
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Verify before you Tweet.
Admit what you don’t know.
Credit what you’re using.
Remember it’s public.
Tweets can be libelous.
What didn’t work
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Follow-ups were tricky
Mechanical errors
Photos were weak
Logistics failed at times
Why it matters
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They learn social media tools
They use mobile tools
They learn to be discerning
They learn power of immediacy
How it can be used in other classes
• Editing practice: Mimics headlines
• Reporting: Reinforces basics
• Great way to practice brevity and clarity in any
type of writing writing
How can be used in other classes
• Study new narrative forms
• Tweet a day – a running diary; followed by a
compilation or a new perspective
• Fiction writing via Twitter
– Writing very short fiction is not new. Ernest
Hemingway once wrote the following six-word
story:
– “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Twitter: A research and reporting tool
• Brain picking
– Muck Rack is compiled of real-time Twitter activity by
journalists.
– Top 50 creative writers on Twitter.
– Connect with writers, editors, publishers on Twitter
– We Follow – theology; politics
– Twitter lists
• To help with reporting and/or research by
– Quickly learning about the topic and staying current –
News21 food safety project.
– Finding sources
– Developing story ideas and paper topics
Hashtags
• Study the ways communities communicate
• Pulse on communities
– #LNK
– #UNL
– #OMA
– #immigration
Other Twitter resources
• Mashable’s guide
• Twitter for Journalists
• 20 Tips for Journalists
• 10,000 Words
Twitter etiquette
• 10 commandments
Twitter for newsrooms
• #TfN
Learning about a topic
and staying current
• RSS readers help you quickly get up to
speed on a subject
• It pushes information to you and is a onestop shop for
– Blogs
– Web sites
– Searches
– Twitter feeds
RSS Readers
• Google Reader
– My Google Reader
Social bookmarking
– Keep online documents organized and have
quick access to them
– Offer a streamlined way to collaborate and
share information – you don’t have to e-mail
separate links
– Help with discovery by allowing you to search
the bookmarks of others interested in the topic
Social bookmarking
• Delicious
Using social media digital tools
• Digital tools links
• Michelle’s multimedia course blog