Zombie Journalism

A very basic overview of Foursquare, Gowalla and other location-based services, including a glossary and tips for use.

Thanks to Facebook’s near-constant changes to their privacy settings, it’s tough to keep documentation on them up to date. In preparation for staff training here at TBD, I’ve completely overhauled these resources for anyone wishing to use Facebook for their professional journalism uses as well as their personal lives. I hope you’ll find these useful. [...]

Personally, I’m not a big fan of social media policies. While I recognize a lot of companies need to have these policies in place to cover their butts in court, I generally frown upon anything that gives journalists any excuse to not communicate openly with sources and/or readers via social media.
So this isn’t a social [...]

Despite its reputation, Twitter is not just to tell people what you had for breakfast. Journalists willing to learn the tool well can also use Twitter to:

Monitor the activities and interactions of people you cover
Crowdsource stories by asking your followers for ideas or info
Quickly find [...]

It’s downright amazing what you can find out from Twitter’s formidable search engine. Here’s just some of what you can do with Twitter’s publicly available feeds:
• See what’s happening on your beat: Basic, but no less awesome. Follow the Twitter feeds of any agencies, officials and other contacts on your beat.
• Find people on the scene or [...]

As we’re hiring new staff members for every position from web producers to listings editors and transit reporters, a lot of my job at TBD will be devoted to bringing all those new hires – plus some of our existing staff from News Channel 8 and WJLA – up to speed on social media tools [...]

When you’ve spent your entire professional career in a newspaper’s newsroom, it’s pretty easily to get your mind blown at a startup. I can attest to that firsthand in my first few days on the job at TBD.
Instead of shoehorning some new media approach into a centuries-old tradition, we’re building something so new, it’s [...]

For better or worse, the people who comment on news websites do represent part of the readership we claim to serve. So should we as a news organization and conversation hub be trying to suppress their opinions?

When Reuters released its new social media policy last week, their competition had to be salivating. The wire service stipulates that its reporters are not to use Twitter to break news – and thus are digging their own grave.

The court case of Anthony Kirkland is showing us that while Twitter and live blogs and all that are great tools for enhancing the way readers get news, it’s tough to replace the know-how of an experienced beat reporter.