Dabblers go home; journalists need to be social media leaders

Gina Chen, who I admire for her clear-headed and sensible writing about how journalists can use social media technologies, reminds us today that, for many modern readers, if the news is important enough, it will find them.

It’s on journalists and news organizations to make it possible for the news to find its audience, which means that journalists need to do more than just dabble in social media, Chen writes. They become leaders in using the technology.

The point of using social media isn’t that Facebook is popular and lots of people, particularly young people, hang out there. The point is the way people find the news today is they expect it to find them. If news organizations want to be valuable to their readers’, they not only need great content and interactive features, they need to to use these features. To me, what that means for news organizations is their staffs need to understand social media better than the readers, so they can lead, rather than follow.

Related posts:

1. Richard Sambrook: Transparency is the new objectivity, and the Internet is not your enemy
2. HOME SWEET HOME
3. The importance of transparency
4. Washington Post columnist on why reporters should use Twitter
5. Web first or not?