Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Year: 2010 Page 1 of 6

New media ethics, same as old media ethics

By

On December 30, 2010

In Industry News & Notes

Earlier this week, the Patch site in Palo Alto apologized after a freelancer  plagiarized a story from another website.  An apology posted on the site stated that copy was lifted from VentureBeat, an online tech news site. It doesn’t state if the freelancer will continue to work for the site, but the apology includes this:

The writer has been told that taking work of other writers or news organizations without attribution is absolutely not acceptable.

I would hope, at least, that this isn’t the first time said freelancer has heard this.

Patch sites haven’t had the best rep when it comes to plagiarism, similar lifting incidents have occurred in West Hollywood, New Rochelle (NY).  But really, this isn’t about Patch at all. It’s about all of us in the growing new media world.

The spate of plagiarism charges leveled at Patch are indicative of an industry that is growing so fast that it’s leaving its employees behind.

New media ventures are hiring up a storm right now. Patch boasts that it is the largest hirer of journalists in the United States. Huffington Post, Politico, TBD and others are also hiring for online-only news operations. These workforces are hired cheap to work fast, which can lead to inexperienced journalists working with little or no hands-on editorial leadership if not handled correctly.

Not that a lack of knowledge about ethical and legal issues is limited to inexperienced journalists. I can personally account for several instances where journalists far above my pay grade and double my experience have revealed a startling lack of regard or knowledge for media ethics (especially as it pertains to the web).

Because many new media orgs don’t have the manpower to constantly monitor the work of employees and freelancers after they get started, it is important that there is some degree of ethics and legal training for all new hires and contract employees. I’m not talking about asking them to sign some document of complicated legalese in their first-day pile of healthcare forms and sexual harassment policies – I mean real policies and guidelines, laid out in a way that will stick.

Short of a formal class or sit-down on these issues, a document outlining the highlights of new media ethics and legal issues should be distributed to new employees. It should be straight-forward, easy-to-understand and outline definite consequences.

Here’s what I would highlight on the copyright and plagiarism front:

  • Don’t copy or use text, images or multimedia without permission from anywhere on the web – this includes Facebook, Twitter and Google images.
  • Credit all sources and link whenever possible.
  • When aggregating others’ coverage, don’t use more than a paragraph – and ALWAYS link to the original with named credit.

What else?

Link roundup: How we’re getting paid this week

By

On December 29, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links

Monetizing location at the local level

My former employer, the Cincinnati Enquirer, has launched a long-simmering idea for a locally-based Foursquare-esque app. The location-based app, called Porkappolis, is available for use worldwide, but has a local focus. It’s similar to a lot of other location-based services, but the potential for local deals and gameplay could make it a real player.  We’ll see how it plays out – perhaps it can be an early example for other media venturing into the app space.

Newsflash: iPad hasn’t saved print yet

WWD reports that iPad magazine sales have gone down in the fall after the device’s summer debut. While this isn’t some larger sign that the iPad and other e-readers won’t help to fund news organizations in the long-term, it is a sign that the pricing structure may be all wrong right out of the gate.

As the commenters at WWD point out, the price structure for iPad magazines isn’t affordable or at all comparable to their print counterparts. Sure, some new iPad owners will buy that first issue to try it out on the new device, but they won’t continue if the price is continually as much or more than that of  print edition. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

More Facebook = More Web Traffic

Facebook lays out the numbers for how news organizations like the Washington Post, Sporting News and Cracked have fared since further integrating the social networking tools into their sites.

Int he provided examples, at least, Facebook widgets, Connect and Open Graph integrations have led to a boost in referrals to those sites due to increased link-sharing, recommendations and comments from Facebook users. It’s hardly surprising, but it is a further indication that news sites that are closed off to including Facebook widgets and integrations are missing the boat on the web traffic they can provide.  Maybe it’s time to shake that corporate template, eh?

Tumblr is ideal for spur-of-the-moment news projects

By

On December 22, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

Tumblrs are showing up all over the news these days. From Politico to Pro Publica, The New Yorker and Newsweek – it’s become a popular platform for collecting links, images, quotes – pretty much whatever journalists find interesting that they can’t get into their regular stories and posts.

In experimenting with Tumblr for various possible future TBD projects, I’ve been astounded at how easy it is to kick off a theme blog. Aside from the 30 seconds or so it takes to set one up, if you have an idea in mind, you can populate it really quickly. Case in point: My coworker Jeff Sonderman said on Twitter Tuesday morning that he wished there were a Tumblr for holiday clichés. Within minutes, I had one set up and populated. It is now owning my life.

Tumblr says it is adding 25,000 new accounts daily, and each month it serves up 1.5 billion page views. Beyond the on-site following, Tumblr is effective for sharing short bursts of content across the web via social media.

Mark Coatney, who got Newsweek onto Tumblr (and now is employed by Tumblr), calls it “a space in between Twitter and Facebook.”

“People are creating identities and personalities that Facebook and Twitter are not designed to allow you to do,” he said.

And he’s right – you can be more conversational, collect and curate information like you would on Twitter, but the “fan” and following relationship is similar to that of Facebook.

So you want to get into Tumblr

There’s a lot of advice out there on Tumblr for news organizations, so I won’t repeat it.

The Atlantic offers “Five Keys to Tumblr for Media Outlets“, outlining the best parts of the tool for media orgs.

Buzz Feed offers an epic collection of new Tumblrs for 2010, including a personal fave: Awkward Stock Photos. Mashable collects news media Tumblrs to follow.

Cory Bergman writes at Lost Remote that media might want to get into the space, but should be aware of the work involved in upkeep. “If you’re not going to keep it updated (or you’re going to abandon more critical efforts, like Facebook) — then perhaps just reserving a Tumblr name and letting it sit until you can give it the attention it deserves may be the more prudent approach.”

And in an oh-so-meta fashion. there’s a Tumblr outlining rules for using Tumblr aimed at “old and new media”.

There’s a whole Internet outside of Twitter, so don’t forget it

By

On December 9, 2010

In Twitter

Pew released a new study on Twitter demographics today that found only 8 percent of Americans on the web use Twitter. Of that 8 percent, only 2 percent use Twitter on a typical day. Keep in mind that about 74 percent of American adults are internet users, meaning that the Twitter users make up about 6 percent of the entire adult population.

This news shouldn’t be surprising, but maybe it is to those who live in the Twitter echo chamber.

When all of your friends, your coworkers, your spouse and the media you consume are on Twitter, it may seem logical to believe a great deal of America is as well. This is a dangerous assumption for journalists and media organizations to make – and I know I’ve been guilty of it from time to time.

While I still think it is very important for journalists to use Twitter, the following facts must be emblazoned on the brains of media Twitterati:

  • Twitter represents a very small group of people in your area.
  • Being popular on Twitter doesn’t necessarily make one popular or important in real life.
  • Re-tweets, replies and Twitter referrals do not adequately represent the larger interest in or importance of your work as a journalist.
  • Most people that use Twitter don’t use it to get news.

Now, the study. The Pew study did find some interesting demographic tidbits that should be making us rethink how we approach the tool.

  • There are more American women using Twitter as opposed to men (10% to 7%)
  • Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.
  • African-Americans and Latinos web users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are their white counterparts.
  • Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.

So what does all of this mean?

Read More

Recommended reading: Investigative social media, new ideas and tools

By

On November 24, 2010

In Recommended Links, Social Media, TBD

Sorry it’s been so long, but it’s been crazy busy as TBD’s preparing for the holidays and other events. This’ll be a quick one, just a few links I’ve been reading of late. Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks.

Social media roundup

  • How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media – Great ideas from several resources gathered by Vadim Lavrusik at Mashable on how to use social media in investigative reporting and newsroom projects. Includes tips on Crowdmap, Storify, Twitter crowdsourcing, data searches and more. A great post to pass on to the social media haters in your newsroom.
  • RockMelt: The User Manual– If you don’t know about Rockmelt or want to know more on how to use the new social browser, here’s a great guide from the NY Times.
  • 6 innovative uses of Tumblr by newsrooms – The big media companies are only now getting into Tumblr, but there’s a lot of possibilities out there for it.
  • Engaging Facebook fans with clever, conversational updates – Great ideas from Web Up the Newsroom for writing interesting status updates on a media outlet’s Facebook page to drive traffic to content and drive discussion online.
  • In this disturbing bit from FishbowlDC, a Washington Post editor says “crediting the original source of a scoop isn’t “a requirement or even important” because “all news originates from somewhere” and “unless one is taking someone else’s work without attribution (that is, plagiarizing it) any news story should stand on its own and speaks for itself as an original piece of work.” Hm.
  • How News Organizations Are Generating Revenue From Social Media – Another great Mashable rundown of the top ways online media is generating revenue using social media and more to hit new audiences.

On the TBD Front

How TBD’s election day experiments turned out

By

On November 4, 2010

In TBD, Work Stuff & Projects

As promised, I’m reporting back on TBD’s election day experiments.

The Voting Issues Crowdmap seemed to be successful. We had a lot fewer reports than in the primaries, but considering D.C. turnout was lower and there were fewer issues reported overall, I’d say that’s accurate. We got 20 accepted reports in and some were very intriguing. Take this one:

My husband & I were told that we could not vote unless we left the children (11 month old & 3 year old) in the hallway. Then the security guard…told us we could take the 11 month old, but had to leave my 3 year old unattended in the lobby & if we didn’t want to do that, then we were unable to vote!

The Foursquare experiment was interesting, though it didn’t yield overwhelming participation. This was kind of expected, considering we didn’t have a lot of lead time and, it turns out, the venues were not easily found on the Foursquare mobile app. Next time, we’ll have to try enlisting Foursquare’s help instead of going out on our own. Here’s how it went down:

At the Virginia venue, 21 people checked in after voting and two left tips about their votes. D.C. had 66 people check in, Maryland had 51 check-ins and six tips about who they voted for in the governor’s race. Those who checked in at both the Maryland and D.C. election venues ended up earning a Swarm badge (if they didn’t have one already). All who checked in and said they were voting got Foursquare’s custom “I Voted” badge. If you missed it, Foursquare also set up a special site to track these voter check-ins as a measure of turnout.

Link roundup: Facebook deals, Times paywalls, ONA and news experiments

By

On November 3, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links

Geolocation meets deals

Last news first. Facebook announced today that it will be doing more with its location feature, including offering deals tied to location. This could spell trouble for other geolocation providers like Foursquare and Gowalla, group buying sites like Groupon and, sadly, news sites looking for revenue streams. Facebook is offering these deals for free right now – and who’ll buy the proverbial cow through the likes of us when they can get the milk for free from Facebook?

A consumer/business side take on Facebook Places from D.C. blogger Lisa Byrne at DCEventJunkie outlines the potential on the local level. Facebook seem to have a lot of options for businesses of many sizes and kinds (including charities) to take advantage of the deal service.

Paywalls busted

Also today, GigaOm declares It’s Official: News Corp.’s Paywalls Are a Bust. NewsCorp’s Times (in London) lost 90% of its online traffic after putting up a paywall earlier this year. Somehow, they paint this as success, as they see a smaller online audience that is paying for their service as better than a large one getting it for free. Advertisers, it seems, disagree.

Election Experiments

I blogged here about what TBD was doing for elections (will update today with how that all turned out).The Nieman Lab and Lost Remote documented what news organizations around the country were doing to cover the 2010 election using news media and social media tools. Some great ideas in these posts from the likes of the Huffington Post, NPR and Washington Post.

More Adventures in Storify

Speaking of newsroom experiments, we at TBD are still in love with the tool. Burt Herman, who created the tool, was in the office Monday to tell us a few tips and tricks as well as take suggestions for improvements. Burt is awesome. We’ve been trying it in lots of different instances and news situations. Here’s a few of them:

Online News Association Conference

This was my first ONA conference and I was lucky to have it be in D.C. I volunteered, so I didn’t see many panels, but I was on the Friday keynote panel about TBD’s launch. Since I don’t have great notes, here’s some posts that summed up a lot of the conference’s highlights.

On Jobs (also ONA)

I sat for an interview Friday at ONA with Kent State student Nicole Stempak about journalism jobs for college grads. She asked me to explain how I’ve been fortunate enough to create my own positions in social media and online news since I left college. A few people asked me to share it, so I’m posting it here.

Using Foursquare and Crowdmap to track local elections

By

On November 1, 2010

In Location Apps, My Work, TBD

With the midterm elections coming tomorrow, lots of news outlets will likely be launching their fanciest new toys and social media ideas to best pull in that coveted election night audience on the web. TBD’s no exception, though our election day experiments are based in off-site crowdsourcing to better inform our on-site coverage.

As we did with the Washington D.C. primary elections, we’re launching a Crowdmap to track voting problems across the District, Northern Virginia and parts of Maryland. We’re asking readers to report long lines, broken machines, ballot refusals, electioneering and such at the polls using email, Twitter hashtags or on-site reports. It worked pretty well in September, though this time I’m a bit worried about Crowdmap’s servers holding up. Right now as I post this, they’re struggling to load any of our maps.

I’m particularly excited to try out Foursquare in Tuesday’s election coverage. In our attempt to take a local approach to the National Post’s Foursquare “exit poll” experiment, I set up three new venues to collect voter check-ins.: Virginia Congressional Elections 2010, Maryland Governor Election 2010 and D.C. Election 2010. Once readers check in to the correct venue, we’re asking them to submit a tip to that venue telling us who they voted for and why.

While these check-ins and tips won’t be any kind of real measurement, it will give an interesting look at how many people on Foursquare are voting in local races and how those votes are leaning – if people use it. If enough people check in, they could earn a Swarm badge, at least.

Here’s hoping something takes off.

How and why news orgs should answer critics on Twitter

By

On October 27, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

There was a minor kerfuffle in the intersection of journalism and social media this week when the Washington Post told its staff not to respond to critics on the paper’s official Twitter accounts following a not-so-great interaction with @glaad about a controversial editorial decision.

Reaction in the social media world was about what you’d expect.

David Heyman, a former Post employee, commented on TBD’s story, “So if I’m understanding correctly, the Post branded accounts are to be used for old-fashioned publishing, pushing the Post’s stories out to an appreciative audience or for the Post to receive UGC to again, push out. To use SM for actual interaction with interested parties is forbidden.”

And there were tweets, most like this one:

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It’s the Post’s prerogative if they don’t want to have outward-facing replies to critics on their biggest Twitter accounts. They probably aren’t alone in adopting such a policy – and it isn’t an entirely bad one. The problem is when “don’t respond publicly on this account” really means “don’t respond at all”.

This memo has prompted a good bit of soul-searching by journalists and the audiences they serve.  Media blogger Ron Mwangaguhunga explored both sides of the comment/no comment issue. In Mashable’s coverage, readers were polled as to whether or not they think news organizations should respond to readers on Facebook. Almost 50 percent said “Yes, there should be an open dialogue” and 23 percent more said “Sometimes, depending on the situation”.

Social media was created for back-and-forth interaction – and that’s what Twitter users want from the brands they follow. The best companies out there know this and they’ve taken advantage of the medium by using Twitter as an extension of their customer service department.

Many news organizations, on the other hand, use their social media accounts as little more than a big mouthpiece to broadcast their links to an adoring audience. This practice is a prime example of an adherence to an old way of thinking about the relationship between media outlets and the readers who keep them going.

I’ve been running Twitter accounts for a news organizations of some sort since early 2008, so I have a little bit of experience with handling complaints, criticism and questions from readers and competitors. I’d never call myself an expert, but I have a few words of advice gathered from my own anecdotal evidence and years-long tinkering.

How a news organization should manage customer service on Twitter

If the person follows your account, reply via direct message: If you do this, immediately follow them as well, so you can receive a direct message in response.

If they do not follow you, first, follow them. This will show you saw their tweet. Now you have a choice:

1. Reply directly to them from the organization’s Twitter account. If it is a direct reply, the only people who would see if are you, the person you’re replying to and anyone that follows both of you. This has to be a tweet starting with @theirname.

2. Reply on your own account, but be sure you either identify in the tweet or in your bio where you work. There are good reasons to take this route – maybe the information shared is somewhat exclusive, or maybe you don’t want to bog down your followers with excess tweets. Remember, while this may be “your” account, you’re answering as a representative of your company – so be professional.

3. Re-tweet/reply. If there are a lot of people with the same point, or you want to address it to a larger audience, re-tweet a user and work in a short reply. This will go to all of your followers, so you may not want to do this all of the time with customer service responses to avoid filling followers’ feeds.

Whatever you choose to do, don’t ignore a complaint or a question sent your way. Even if you don’t have an answer, say so. Thank them for commenting, give them an email address of someone with more info – anything so long as you acknowledge you are listening.

I can’t express how many times people have seemed genuinely thankful just to be answered on Twitter, though with so many brands being active in social media these days – replies are getting to be expected instead of just thoughtful.

To take it a step further, you should also have a running Twitter search up for your organization’s name and primary link. This will give you the people who are passing on your links, those complaining without addressing the organization directly and those who may not even know the company’s Twitter handle.

This is one way reaching out can really open doors with critics. They weren’t even talking to you, but you took the time to answer. That’s excellent customer service – and it can really win over critics.

Excellent Twitter customer service, above anything else (even breaking news), is the way to build a loyal, re-tweet happy follower base.

10 ways journalists can use Storify

By

On October 21, 2010

In New Technology, Social Media, TBD

When Storify appeared on the collective journalism screen a few weeks back at TechCrunch Disrupt, it inspired a lot of oohs, ahhs and speculation as to how it would work for journalists.

There are similar curation tools out there, like KeepStream and Curated.by, though they focus primarily on collecting tweets (Correction: KeepStream also allows for Facebook integration). Storify, on the other hand, allows a user to organize various media (text, documents, video, images) and social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into an orderly, linear presentation. The story pieces retain all of their original links and functionality – and the full presentations are embeddable on any site.  It has a very easy-to-use search for social media keywords and works using a drag-and-drop functionality. In other words – it’s easy multimedia for even the most technologically challenged journalist.

It has a couple of downfalls, the biggest of which, to me, is the lack of hard timestamps on content from Twitter (though that’s largely Twitter’s fault).

In the weeks since the Nieman Lab actually used Storify to explain Storify, many journalists and bloggers have taken the opportunity to experiment with the tool – with incredibly varied results. Here’s a few interpretations of just how Storify has been and can be used in journalism.

1. Organizing reaction in social media. The Washington Post gathered reaction from Twitter and Facebook to the resignation of Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee last week. While there are a lot of tools once could use to do this (Quote URL, Twitter search, Cover it Live), the Storify approach looks very clean and was likely very fast to put together. It’s a great tool for on-the-fly curation from various social media sources.

2. Giving back-story using past content. PBS NewsHour had a different take on Rhee’s resignation. Going beyond the basic topic archive page, their piece created a summary of Rhee’s past challenges with DCPS, weaving in stories, videos and scripts from their archives with some curated social media reactions. It is similar to a traditional story in its scope, giving the full background on Rhee’s tenure with reaction quotes via social media.

3. Curating topical content. NYU Studio 20’s East Village used Storify and a very sharp web presentation to create SocialDiningNYC, a site that has collect and curated information on NYC restaurants. Each venue has it’s own Storify line collecting reviews, reactions, media and info – and each file is linked from a primary hub site. The key to making this look nice was the consistency with which each Storify file was built and worded.

4. Displaying a non-linear social media discussion or chat. Penn Professor and Wired blogger Tim Carmody used Storify to illustrate an amusing Twitter quest he took on to get a few key social media contacts to follow him. He pulled together the entire back-and-forth between him, the people he was trying to engage and his current followers. It looks a lot better than TweetSpat (and involves more characters) and it makes the conversation seem more linear than it likely did in real time. This is a fun idea – and it could be great for archiving Twitter chats into some modicum of sense.

5. Creating a multimedia/social media narrative. Last Friday, I used Storify at TBD to make sense of an ever-changing series of events involving a death outside popular Washington D.C. nightclub DC9. In the course of one day, the story took a lot of twists and turns, illustrated in the narrative by tweets (from both news orgs and those reacting), photos, video and documents. Reading down the story, you can get a feel for how the events developed and evolved in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar to more traditional narrative stories. I talked a little bit more about the story behind this piece to the Nieman Storyboard, if you want to know more.

6. Organize your live tweets into a story: Michael Margolis of GetStoried used Storify to tell the story of his time spent at the National Storytelling Festival. He weaves in quotes and experiences from the scene as tweets from throughout the day. I could see this as being very useful for reporters who live tweet press conferences, government meetings and events. Using this method, those reporters could focus on Twitter in real-time, then build a story from those tweets (and others’) when the event is over.

7. Collaborate on a topic with readers. Seamus Condron of ReadWriteWeb tested out Storify with RWW’s Twitter followers. He posed the question “My day would be a lot easier if Twitter…”. The story builds out from there with responses to the prompt from followers, @RWW replies and contextual info from other media in response to reader contributions.

These are likely just the beginning of what’s been done or could be done using Storify. I have dreamed up a few more ideas if you’d like to think about using this tool on your site.

8. Create a timeline of events. I know from experience that it can be a big pain to build an attractive online timeline without the aid of a designer. I think Storify’s interface would be a quick way to pull in text and other content into a timeline format that could look nice without any fancy HTML.

9. Display audience content from across platforms. Say you’re asking your readers to give you photos, videos and reactions based around an event or topic. You put out this call on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and on your site. Instead of gathering all of this content and re-publishing it on-site, you can organize all of those updates, comments, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Twitpics and emailed-in multimedia into one Storify file without any CMS nonsense.

10. Live curate live tweets from the stream. If you have multiple reporters or sources live-tweeting a news event, pull them together quickly and in an order that makes sense in Storify. Sure, you could pull all of their tweets or use a hashtag using other means, but this way you could choose to select only some tweets – and it wouldn’t matter who used a hashtag or not, as you can search for tweets via keyword.

Storify narrative: Death outside DC9

By

On October 21, 2010

In My Work

On October 15, I used Storify at TBD to make sense of an ever-changing series of events involving a death outside popular Washington D.C. nightclub DC9.

In the course of one day, the story took a lot of twists and turns, illustrated in the narrative by tweets (from both news orgs and those reacting), photos, video and documents. Reading down the story, you can get a feel for how the events developed and evolved in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar to more traditional narrative stories.

I talked a little bit more about the story behind this piece to the Nieman Storyboard, if you want to know more. Here’s the Storify:

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Four who influenced my approach to social media

By

On October 4, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

As part of their 35th anniversary, Poynter is crowdsourcing a list of the 35 most influential people in social media. They ask people to write Facebook notes or tweets recommending people for the list, with votes to come via re-tweets and likes.

This kind of voting system makes it very likely that we’ll see the 35 usual suspects on the list when it’s all said and done: Vadim Lavrusik, Robert Quigley, Andy Carvin, Craig Kanalley and my boss, Steve Buttry, I’m sure, will be shoo-ins. It’s with this in mind I want to recognize people many voters in this group probably won’t know, but who’ve influenced my approach to social media more than just about anyone else.

#1 & #2 (tie): Kevin Dugan & Daniel Lally

I put these two guys together because their influence is interconnected in so many ways. I got into social media as we know it in mid-to-late 2007. In January of 2008, I joined the budding Cincinnati chapter of the Social Media Breakfast, founded by Kevin Dugan & Dan Lally – it expanded my world.

It’s a rare occasion for a journalist to admit to learning from the world of marketing and PR, but at that time, that’s who dominated Twitter and Facebook – and these two were pros. Not only did they personally teach me so much about how to engage audiences with measurable (and immeasurable) results thanks to their experiences in brand marketing, but through Cincy SMB, they introduced me to many others who were experimenting with social media as well. I know for a fact I would have never grown past tweeting about my lunch if not for these two and the learning experiences I had through Cincinnati Social Media.

#3 Paul Bradshaw

Paul’s Online Journalism Blog is probably linked more than any other from this site – and for good reason. He’s always talking about issues in new media that reflect not only his experiences as a journalist in the UK (which is fascinating in and of itself), but also what’s affecting new media across the world. OJB’s explanatory posts on social media projects, tool how-tos, new policies and those who seek to shut such things down have been a constant source of ideas and inspiration for me. Also, in 2009, Paul founded Help Me Investigate, a platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism. Hard to top that.

#4: Jack Greiner

Jack’s not a journalist, a marketer or even a social media acolyte – he’s a media lawyer for Graydon Head & Ritchey in Cincinnati, OH. He’d frequently hold sessions for the Cincinnati Enquirer staff on potential legal issues in regards to social media. Unlike other presentations I’d seen on the subject, he didn’t seek to scare journos away from social media altogether (no matter how much they would have rather he did). He made us think about what we were doing as being no different than any other facet of journalism – and in doing so, he inspired me to pursue more research in the area. He gets a bonus vote for always being kind enough to take my incessant questions on points of case law.

—

Also, I have to give a shout out to Sarah Fidelibus, who named ME, of all people, as one of her picks for most influential people in social media. She said some nice things about ZJ, which is great to hear. I hope it’s been a helpful/interesting/funny read for the rest of you, too.

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