by Jessica Luczywo, jessicaluczywo@gmail.com
This week 20 students attended the seminar “Social Networking for News” taught by Dr. Hans Meyer as part of this year's Scripps High School Journalism Workshop.
“I personally use a lot of social networking sites and see a lot of media outlets using them, and would like to know how to use them in the future,” Workshop participant Amanda Rossetti said.
Meyer said he wanted to teach the class tips for using social networking for journalism. Social networking is best used to further promotion, connection and coverage, according to Meyer.
Promotion is furthered because the use of social networking allows the user to end up with friends and devoted supporters, rather than just readers.
Students in the class said they use social networking internally in their school paper for communication, as a Facebook group to send friends current news and to conduct interviews.
The more connected people feel to their source, the more they care about the news, according to Meyer. When people are constantly updated with news through social networking sites, the source seems more reliable.
Journalists can infer information through social networking sites in order to develop stories, find a lead to a story and diversify their coverage.
Social networking allows the community to control the news and journalists to customize their coverage according to what people want to know.
