Modern day journalism: It’s online, it’s fast, it can be problematic

Meryl Gottlieb
mg986611@ohio.edu

Spotting stories on social media

I am a frequent user of Facebook and Twitter. On each account, I follow multiple news organizations from TV Line to Good Morning America to CNN and NPR. While this may not be something you want to hear from a future journalist, these social media accounts are a main way I obtain news.

I frequently log on, scroll through my news feed and see what the latest stories are. Most of the time, I skim my friends’ statuses and look to what organizations have written about. I “like” these pages because I want to know what they are publishing and don’t have time every day to remind myself to go to 10 to 15 separate news organizations’ sites.

With Facebook and Twitter, I have a countless number of sources that all produce different styles of news — from mostly entertainment to some breaking and hard news sites — in one place. For someone who is already stretched a little thin on her free time, condensing where I can look for all of my news is efficient and just simply easier.

I found out about the Boston marathon bombing because I was on Twitter. Had I not been, I would not have found out about the horror until much later. Last year, when an armed fugitive attempted robbery and it resulted in the campus shutting down, I wrote a column in The Post. In it, I described how I only knew what was happening on campus because of official university Twitter accounts, not because of the Ohio University emergency alert system. Here, we have the power of Twitter.

It’s interesting that only 43 percent of people actually share links. That is the very purpose of putting these links on social media! Organizations can rely on their followers, but things become viral or trend when a specific follower shares it with their followers who then shares it with their followers and so on. That’s supposed to be the magic of social media and, yet, it’s not being utilized the way it should. False information can spread like wildfire and even end up trending, but news stories about the latest happenings overseas will barely reach half of the people on Twitter.

I do oftentimes share stories. Typically, they are stories about entertainment news, but regardless, it is still news that an audience wants to know about. Rarely, do I share other news organizations’ links on Facebook; it is almost always on Twitter when I do that. This is because I share so many of my own links to my own stories on Facebook that it would be simply overwhelming, and it’s sort of the function of Twitter to post a ton of statuses without it being annoying as it would be on Facebook. It’s just the mentality that surrounds that specific social media platform.

The tragedy of Twitter

Twitter allows for a rapid transmission of information. It is its most important strength and its largest weakness. Twitter can be a great way of getting information out there in a fast way. However, it is also an opportunity to spread false information as if it were correct.

When Hurricane Sandy hit, memes filled the Internet with references to Sandy from Grease and Spongebob, but there were photos that weren’t so funny. Many photos circulated Twitter depicting menacing clouds near the Statue of Liberty, acting as if it were a real photo taken of the natural disaster occurring in the area. It wasn’t. It was a tampered photo — a Photoshop combination of the New York harbor with a photo taken by Mike Hollingshead, according to Mashable. 

Photo Courtesy of Mashable

In response to the flood of false information about Sandy, The Atlantic created a list of ways to tweet responsibly during a breaking news event. The one I must stress the most is to never tweet information you cannot verify yourself or something you haven’t watched or looked over thoroughly. Always be aware that what you tweet is going to come back to you.

A basis for blogging

I have a special place in my heart for blogging. I have blogged about TV for The Post’s culture blog since the beginning of my freshmen year. It’s how I started at The Post and it is what has grown the blog’s presence over the past year. I blog at least three times a week since I review three different shows, but that number often grows because I also do posts about TV news.

When I blog about TV news, I always credit where I am receiving this information. This just goes back to fact checking. I make sure I rely on credible sites, and I let the readers know where this information came from and what the full story is.

Every time I blog, my byline includes my name, my OU email and my Twitter handle. Readers then have multiple ways to contact me for any comments on the posts or to continue the discussion. We are as transparent as possible.

While on the subject of social media and journalism, I have to say that I dislike when people or outlets suggest that one should have separate accounts for personal social media and the accounts they want to have put out to the public. During my collegiate correspondent program with USA TODAY College over the summer, we spoke to Mary Nahorniak, the social media editor at USA TODAY. What I remember most from this conversation was that she said we were allowed to be humans. We can show our readers and our sources that we are people with personal lives. I should be able to tweet about something non-news related and then use the same account to tweet out my stories. I don't agree with anyone that says someone should have a business account and a personal account. What's so horrible about having those be the same?

Overall, use social media appropriately, accurately and efficiently. Use it to your advantage. Don’t misuse it because that will only do more harm than help.