News Journalism and Social Networking Technologies

more about “Future of Journalism Brisbane | the e…“, posted with vodpod

Source: Future of Journalism Brisbane | the earley edition

 

Dave Earley, journalist for Brisbane’s Courier Mail, spoke with news.com.au editor David Higgins at Brisbane’s Future of Journalism conference last weekend. Earley asked Higgins whether both online and print journalists at news.com.au were encouraged to use social networking applications such as Facebook and Twitter as tools for gathering news.

Higgins began his response by describing his approach to new job applicants for journalism positions. He said that one of the first things he wants to know about applicants is whether they have an online presence and the extent of it.

I always like to ask how many Facebook friends they have because the more they have, the more likely they are to be using it as a journalistic tool.

However, work as a networked journalist is not as simple as that. As Higgins pointed out, while social networking applications are great for research, they are equally important for promoting and distributing content.

Twitter too, he said, has similar benefits, but Higgins was thinking beyond the idea of individual journalists using single applications. He described  Juan Giner’s “news room of the future”, which, he said,  is run from a central desk. The “radar desk”, as it is called, is operated by a team of journalists who gather information using social networking technologies, then distribute it for follow-up to field journalists covering those areas.

One of the key points in this interview is Higgins’ emphasis on  processed information.

He says:

“It’s crucial to process all of the information that’s coming in so that we can get breaking stories and there’s plenty of stories being broken by using those technologies.”

Juan Giner is a partner with the Innovation International Media Group. More on Giner’s views of the news industry are here.

Thanks to Dave Earley for taping and publishing this interview.

There is more on The Future of Journalism conference here