By Al Montano
Walking somewhere with no sense of direction is practically pointless. The same can be said about social media. There has to be a sense of purpose.
In other words, what do the readers want?
Joy Mayer of the Columbia Missourian (where she is the director of community outreach and teaches classes in participatory journalism, multimedia design and print design), taught us how important it is to be interactive in the world of journalism, especially in a small town like Columbia.
Social media is a personal and conversational tool you can use to communicate, but at first I only thought it referred to Facebook and Twitter. I was wrong.
She got us thinking about what readers want besides a story and how they could be better integrated into the part of the news that gets reported in newspapers and online.
One thing I found more interesting was all the different avenues that are available for readers to use to have a better and deeper connection with reporters. For instance, audience fact checking has become an important asset to reporters because readers can save reporters from errors.
From now on, whenever I have stories published and get a chance to be a part of a community outreach project, I will make a better effort to interact more with the public, whether through Facebook, a web site or another avenue.
The social approach to journalism is crucial to succeeding in a small town because you are more likely to get a response from someone in there than in a large city. And most young journalists start out in small town newspapers, so it’s important that I include this tool in my resume. After all, it’s the readers that make up the community you work in.
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