Dabblers go home; journalists need to be social media leaders

Twitter is, of course, one of the major examples of social technology journalists can get into with little effort. Despite that ease, though, it's hard to get traditional print journalists to see the value of social media.

I spoke to two reporters about Twitter yesterday. One of them asked me what it is. "I hear about people posting stuff about what they had for breakfast," she said. "I just don't know. Does everybody see it? Who sees what you write? How do you even do it?"

The second reporter, who'd been listening this whole time, chimes in: "Could you teach me how to like it?" She had apparently started a Twitter account a long time ago but abandoned it because the site didn't hold her interest.

I can explain to the first reporter easily enough how Twitter works and how to use it, but how can I begin to show these print-centric writers how Twitter can be useful as a tool for journalism?

Maybe part of the answer comes in reminding them that their audience is changing, even in small-city Montana. 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.

To me, this quote reminds me why I sign in to Twitter every day and try to promote my news organization online. To the reporters, it's just one more thing they don't have time to read. Reaching them will be hard; converting them will be harder. Why do I feel like a missionary?

Related posts:

1. Survey: Nearly one-third of journalists don’t use social media or read blogs
2. Social media as journalism in a small city
3. The Power of Social Media Comes Full Circle in Montana
4. Social media snake oil
5. Have a reason for using social media techs