How Social Media Has Transformed Newsrooms, and 5 Ways You Can Use New Media Techniques to Your Communications Advantage!

Background: Especially over the past two years, social media techniques have taken a firm hold in newsrooms and transformed the way news is gathered and reported. It is essential to understand the implications of this change in order to operate an effective communications program involving media interaction.

Program background: Many TV stations have incorporated social media tools into their newscasts and newsgathering efforts. A new position in the newsroom, Online Managing Editor, controls this content and also generates content on their own separately from the Assignment Desk and traditional reporters. These editors are looking for small chunks of very timely information for the web site. As well, reporters are being equipped with digital smartphones, laptops with streaming capability, proprietary upload tools and even completely mobile video backpacks that can go live anywhere there is a cellular signal or Wi-Fi connection. And much of this content may not even appear on the broadcast channel, but may stream live to the station’s web site or be sent out via Twitter and Facebook.  Kerry will provide revealing information direct from newsroom managers.

Evaluation Methods and Results: There are numerous tools a program can put into practice to communicate effectively in this new world of "new media" journalism. These include creating ready-to-use sound bites for radio stations, distributed through the web alongside news releases; shooting their own fast-turnaround web videos; writing effective social media messages that will get noticed and reposted by others; conducting live interviews via Skype; and using live streaming video to provide news conference content to followers. Kerry Shearer will demonstrate as many of these “live” as the time allocated for the session will allow. Effectiveness can be evaluated by stories aired, web hits recorded, re-tweets or re-posts counted, and other criteria.

Conclusions: By implementing some or all of these tools effectively, communications programs will be seen as cutting-edge and will have more success in getting their messages seen and heard.

Implications for research and/or practice: By implementing some or all of these tools effectively, communications programs will be more likely to be perceived as seen as “cutting-edge,” may well further improve their existing relationships with news agencies, and can be expected to have more success in getting their messages seen and heard by audiences. After attending the session, participants will be able to: 1) Describe the ways broadcast news outlets are incorporating social media into the newsroom as an integrated part of newsgathering activities 2) Develop strategies to operate effective media outreach in this new environment 3) Be able to describe at least five tools they can use to enhance their use of social media tools to communicate effectively.