I’ve talked about social media here and in many different presentations at the Missouri School of Journalism, conferences and training seminars. I feel like all of my ramblings are a little more legitimate as more and more journalists debate on whether these trends are good or bad. Obviously I plant myself into the camp that this is good.

Feel free to view my PowerPoint slideshow.

Twitter isnt the end-all be-all for journalism, but I do see it as a growing news tool. The trick, you need to be in there to understand how it works. For the first time, I recommended to all of my students that they should join a few social networks and learn how they work. I started out in Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, Motionbox, Vimeo (I could go on) for my personal needs online and I’ve transitioned that use into ways I can use them professionally. You cannot jump in and think you know how it works. That’s how you end up finding reports like this one. It is so easy to fall into a culture of fear. Journalists shouldn’t allow themselves to do that. I think we should act like journalists, investigate these tools and see how they can be helpful. People are using them. Let’s see how we can use them to our advantage to deliver better news to our markets.

Now I’ll try to stop ranting.

I think I have a blog that is really rolling for the Big 12 Championship. A group of students are live blogging their road trip from Columbia, MO to San Antonio, TX. It’s a blast and I’m finding great ways to help them chat with viewers and share the experience. The traffic is starting to jump and it’s great to see how a small news station can interact with cool behind-the-scenes information using free online products.Check out Chase for the Championship

One of my students came to me and said she wanted to engage the Autism community and get input in a major Autism reporting project. I set up a really simple Blogger blog so she could add content, offer viewers a chance to post comments or email thoughts (giving the student the chance to review the posts and then add them to the blog). She then gathered a team of researchers who documented the project every step of the way. They did first-person video blogs, they posted pictures and they blogged about what they saw and learned. The lead reporter asked questions of the online viewers and shared how the project was getting constructed every step of the way. It’s amazing.
I highly recommend visiting her website: Combating Autism From Within

We could have gotten fancier, but I think the simplicity of it all is why it works. Plus, she tagged each post so you can easily search by topic or researcher name. I love it. Plus, the traffic to the site has been pretty consistently high for a blog that’s only been “advertised” on other autism blogs and periodically on KOMU’s air. Congrats to Ashley Reynolds and her team!On air stories start on the 3rd… But online stories are already posting on the blog!